Chinese Master Spy is by Fernado Relvas.
I Am Sitting in A Room (1970)
I Am Sitting in A Room is a psycho - acoustic classic by Alvin Lucier for voice and tape. It features Lucier recording himself narrating a text which describes this process in action, and then playing the recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re - recorded, and this process is repeated. Since all rooms have characteristic resonance or formant frequencies, Lucier had also specified that a performance need not use his text and the performance may be recorded in any room. However, Lucier himself has recorded the piece in at least one room he did not find aesthetically acceptable.
In fact, certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself.
The process continues until all we can hear is white noise. Different rooms affect the decay of sound in different ways, so this performance is different to the original recorded version. It is not easy to understand and it is not necessarily the most enjoyable listen you will come in contact with. There is no beat and thus no driving force. But what you hear throughout the extent of this album transforms beautifully. By the end of the recording, you are no longer hearing Alvin Lucier’s voice, although it is still there. You are hearing a room. You are hearing the room Alvin Lucier is sitting in.
You can buy I Am Sitting in a Room
.
In fact, certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself.
The process continues until all we can hear is white noise. Different rooms affect the decay of sound in different ways, so this performance is different to the original recorded version. It is not easy to understand and it is not necessarily the most enjoyable listen you will come in contact with. There is no beat and thus no driving force. But what you hear throughout the extent of this album transforms beautifully. By the end of the recording, you are no longer hearing Alvin Lucier’s voice, although it is still there. You are hearing a room. You are hearing the room Alvin Lucier is sitting in.
You can buy I Am Sitting in a Room
.
Humdrum (1998)
Humdrum is a self parody. Since the characters themselves are composed of cast shadows from animated figures, the joke is heightened when they resort to playing shadow puppets with their hands.
This film was born out the need to make a film that was relatively cheap. In Peter Peak's sketchbook, he has been knocking around the idea of making an animated film using shadow puppets, if only because it meant they didn't have to spend a lot of money making complex models.
This film was born out the need to make a film that was relatively cheap. In Peter Peak's sketchbook, he has been knocking around the idea of making an animated film using shadow puppets, if only because it meant they didn't have to spend a lot of money making complex models.
JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971 (Sundandce Film Festival 1980)
For the next 125 minutes, we have a ringside seat to Michelson's stream-of-consciousness ramblings, augmented by fragmentary surrealistic shots culled from modern Berlin and revolutionary Russia. In fact, to explore the ramifications of terrorism, Rainer employs an extended therapy session to evoke the daily experiences of power and repression.
The feminist propaganda films of the late 60's and early 70's were often forceful, this film is not. Its puts forwards feminist ideals without hiding femininity or alienating others. It also presents both sides of an argument about the use of political violence without ever condoning either cause.
Journey from Berlin/1971 declares also a revolution in the structurally obsessed American avant-garde film scene, stating that language is more important than image. Obvious connections between image and sound occur enough to alert viewers to the fact that there are connections they're missing, and, more importantly, to communicate a vision of the world engaged in a historically ongoing global struggle.
The feminist propaganda films of the late 60's and early 70's were often forceful, this film is not. Its puts forwards feminist ideals without hiding femininity or alienating others. It also presents both sides of an argument about the use of political violence without ever condoning either cause.
Journey from Berlin/1971 declares also a revolution in the structurally obsessed American avant-garde film scene, stating that language is more important than image. Obvious connections between image and sound occur enough to alert viewers to the fact that there are connections they're missing, and, more importantly, to communicate a vision of the world engaged in a historically ongoing global struggle.
When the Wind Blows (1986)
When the Wind Blows is an amazing piece of animation, which still remains little known to this day, for the seamless mode in which it combines dimensions, propping 2D characters up against both 2D and 3D backgrounds.
Jim and Hilda are an elderly couple living a tranquil life in a small cottage out in the countryside. Their home is hit indirectly by a Soviet nuclear bomb, leaving it in ashes and barely standing. Jim and Hilda survive by ducking behind a door that Jim set up as an inner refuge. Then they are doomed to suffer the most for something over which they have no voice. They place their trust in a line of government-issued pamphlets and, in spite of the obvious flaws and contradictions in their advice. Their shelter, miraculously, works, altough it leaves them totally unprepared for a threat even more horrifying, devastating and noxious than the blast itself: the nuclear winter that must follow.
When Raymond Briggs first set out to tell this incredible and nerve-jangling story, he chose to do it in one of the most unlikely formats available: a children's comic book. Jimmy Murakami's film is a faithful adaptation, and really maintains Briggs' look, feel and sense of character , but in merely being a movie it lacks the naïve innocence that only a children's storybook could really provide.
You can buy When the Wind Blows
.
Jim and Hilda are an elderly couple living a tranquil life in a small cottage out in the countryside. Their home is hit indirectly by a Soviet nuclear bomb, leaving it in ashes and barely standing. Jim and Hilda survive by ducking behind a door that Jim set up as an inner refuge. Then they are doomed to suffer the most for something over which they have no voice. They place their trust in a line of government-issued pamphlets and, in spite of the obvious flaws and contradictions in their advice. Their shelter, miraculously, works, altough it leaves them totally unprepared for a threat even more horrifying, devastating and noxious than the blast itself: the nuclear winter that must follow.
When Raymond Briggs first set out to tell this incredible and nerve-jangling story, he chose to do it in one of the most unlikely formats available: a children's comic book. Jimmy Murakami's film is a faithful adaptation, and really maintains Briggs' look, feel and sense of character , but in merely being a movie it lacks the naïve innocence that only a children's storybook could really provide.
You can buy When the Wind Blows
.
The War Game (Oscar 1966)
Peter Watkins's depiction of the impact of Soviet nuclear attack on Britain caused dismay within the BBC and in government. It was scheduled for transmission on August 6, 1966 but was not transmitted until 1985, the corporation publicly stating that "the effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting".
Some of the images are almost impossible to look at; they truly illustrate the theory that, in the wake of such a
holocaust, the living will envy the dead. The most heartwrenching scene is the simplest. Asked what he
wants to be when he grows up, a sullen young boy, physically unhurt but with obviously deep emotional
scarred, mutters "I don't want to be nothin'".
The story is told in the style of a news magazine programme. Part interviews and quotations, part acting, this film simulates the aftermath of a large-scale nuclear attack near a rural area of England. It argues that citizens and Civil Defense authorities are poorly prepared for this eventuality, and describes possible physical, psychological and social damage in graphic detail.
It features several different strands that alternate throughout, including a documentary-style chronology of the main events, featuring reportage-like images of the war, the nuclear strikes, and their effects on civilians; brief contemporary interviews, in which passers-by are interviewed about their knowledge of nuclear war issues; optimistic commentary from public figures that clashes with the other images in the film; and fictional interviews with key figures as the war unfolds.
The "dramatic" sequences, with their highly "documentary" look, are retained as fragmentary and discontinuous illustrations of an ongoing documentary narrative which itself disorientingly moves back and forth between statements and assumptions that this is "really happening" before our eyes, and other types of proposition and warning that this is how it "could be" and "might look."
You can buy The War Game
.
Some of the images are almost impossible to look at; they truly illustrate the theory that, in the wake of such a
holocaust, the living will envy the dead. The most heartwrenching scene is the simplest. Asked what he
wants to be when he grows up, a sullen young boy, physically unhurt but with obviously deep emotional
scarred, mutters "I don't want to be nothin'".
The story is told in the style of a news magazine programme. Part interviews and quotations, part acting, this film simulates the aftermath of a large-scale nuclear attack near a rural area of England. It argues that citizens and Civil Defense authorities are poorly prepared for this eventuality, and describes possible physical, psychological and social damage in graphic detail.
It features several different strands that alternate throughout, including a documentary-style chronology of the main events, featuring reportage-like images of the war, the nuclear strikes, and their effects on civilians; brief contemporary interviews, in which passers-by are interviewed about their knowledge of nuclear war issues; optimistic commentary from public figures that clashes with the other images in the film; and fictional interviews with key figures as the war unfolds.
The "dramatic" sequences, with their highly "documentary" look, are retained as fragmentary and discontinuous illustrations of an ongoing documentary narrative which itself disorientingly moves back and forth between statements and assumptions that this is "really happening" before our eyes, and other types of proposition and warning that this is how it "could be" and "might look."
You can buy The War Game
.
Mr. Hayashi (1961)
Baillie's films are characterized by images of haunting, evanescent beauty. An object will appear with spectacular clarity, only to dissolve away an instant later. Light itself often becomes a subject, shining across the frame or reflected from objects, suggesting a level of poetry in the subject matter that lies beyond easy interpretation. Baillie combines images with other images, and images with sound, in dense, collage-like structures.
The effect of Baillie's films is to make the viewer feel that any moment of the viewing, any single image he is looking at is a mere illusion that will soon vanish.
Mr. Hayashi places the poetic and the social in a very precise balance. The narrative, slight as it is, mounts a social critique of sorts, involving the difficulty the title character, a Japanese gardener, has finding work that pays adequately. But the beauty of Baillie's black-and-white photography, which consists of evocative, sun-drenched images forming a short, haiku-like portrait of a man. On the soundtrack, we hear the man speak of his life, and his difficulty in finding work Rather than a study of unemployment, the film becomes a study of nested layers of stillness and serenity
This work also functioned as an advertisement for the film society collective Canyon Cinema, of which Baillie was a co-founder. The natural and intimate pictorial handling of Mr. Hayashi is characteristic of all of Baillie's work,
The effect of Baillie's films is to make the viewer feel that any moment of the viewing, any single image he is looking at is a mere illusion that will soon vanish.
Mr. Hayashi places the poetic and the social in a very precise balance. The narrative, slight as it is, mounts a social critique of sorts, involving the difficulty the title character, a Japanese gardener, has finding work that pays adequately. But the beauty of Baillie's black-and-white photography, which consists of evocative, sun-drenched images forming a short, haiku-like portrait of a man. On the soundtrack, we hear the man speak of his life, and his difficulty in finding work Rather than a study of unemployment, the film becomes a study of nested layers of stillness and serenity
This work also functioned as an advertisement for the film society collective Canyon Cinema, of which Baillie was a co-founder. The natural and intimate pictorial handling of Mr. Hayashi is characteristic of all of Baillie's work,
Fly (1970)
Although only one person was filmed, in contrast to the 331 gathered for the Legs film, Fly was a more complicated project. John Lenno and Yoko Ono asked New York actress Virginia Lust to lie down naked whilst they filmed a fly exploring her body. Approximately 200 flies were used and each had to be stunned with a special gas. The film shows a woman lying so still she looks almost comatose. The only movement is that of a fly, which we follow as it lands on different parts of her body. The film is so slight, and yet there is something in the stillness of her body, the gentle movement of this fly, that seems sensual, even erotic. It was claimed that Virginia Lust also had to be sedated during the filming.
Yoko Ono, along with John Lennon, creates a most irregular surprise in Fly. Sort of a deviant crooked smile is by far one of the albeit queerest pieces of experimental cinema this side of the Lower East Side.
They took two days to film in a New York atticNineteen to show us nineteen minutes of pure heteromorphic deeelight.
Wavelenght (1965)
Wavelength describes a single zoom movement for three quarters of an hour across an almost empty New York loft, resting eventually with the frame of a black-and-white photograph of waves pinned to the wall of the room. Within this pseudo-continuity there are innumerable changes of color filters, sudden shifts into negative, changes from day to night, occasional super-impositions, and a series of human events of increasing dramatic significance.
Wavelength consists of almost no action, and what action does occur is largely elided. If the film could be said to have a conventional plot, this would presumably refer to the three character scenes. In the first scene two people enter a room, chat briefly, and listen to "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the radio. Later, a man enters inexplicably and dies on the floor. And last, the female owner of the apartment is heard and seen on the phone, speaking, with strange calm, about the dead man in her apartment whom she has never seen before.
Briefly men and women enter and exit the frame, triggering the pretense of a narrative. But in reality, the viewer becomes increasingly absorbed in the purpose of the zoom and where it's heading. The sound is a total glissando while the film is a crescendo and a dispersed spectrum which attempts to utilize the gifts of both prophecy and memory which only film and music have to offer.
The human events are filmed with the direct sound which interrupts the steadily increasing sine wave of piercing electronic sound which contributes largely to the uncanniness of the film. The filmmaker dissects the illusion of continuity imposed by zoom, evoking an impressive series of metaphors for memory and death in the process.
Snow wanted to do something where the music could survive and not only be a support for the image.
Wavelenght opens with what appear to be a narrative. The narrative is at best skeletal, but it's one of the most potent critical gestures. Snow was aware that wiever will assume that film is about the death of a man. His decision to invoke character and plot and then ignore them is a way to challenging the conventions.
The zoom is a particularly appropriate tool for Snow's critique, because its movement is virtual, in actuality a relationship between two lenses, the image of an image.
This realization adds the first of many new dimensions to come: by introducing the element of motion, specifically invisible motion like the hands of a clock, the filmmaker adds the temporal element to a composition that in all other respects appears static. Motion is the only phenomenon that allows perception of time; the motion here, like time, is wholly conceptual.
Minutes pass and we can notice subtle details.
Wavelength consists of almost no action, and what action does occur is largely elided. If the film could be said to have a conventional plot, this would presumably refer to the three character scenes. In the first scene two people enter a room, chat briefly, and listen to "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the radio. Later, a man enters inexplicably and dies on the floor. And last, the female owner of the apartment is heard and seen on the phone, speaking, with strange calm, about the dead man in her apartment whom she has never seen before.
Briefly men and women enter and exit the frame, triggering the pretense of a narrative. But in reality, the viewer becomes increasingly absorbed in the purpose of the zoom and where it's heading. The sound is a total glissando while the film is a crescendo and a dispersed spectrum which attempts to utilize the gifts of both prophecy and memory which only film and music have to offer.
The human events are filmed with the direct sound which interrupts the steadily increasing sine wave of piercing electronic sound which contributes largely to the uncanniness of the film. The filmmaker dissects the illusion of continuity imposed by zoom, evoking an impressive series of metaphors for memory and death in the process.
Snow wanted to do something where the music could survive and not only be a support for the image.
Wavelenght opens with what appear to be a narrative. The narrative is at best skeletal, but it's one of the most potent critical gestures. Snow was aware that wiever will assume that film is about the death of a man. His decision to invoke character and plot and then ignore them is a way to challenging the conventions.
The zoom is a particularly appropriate tool for Snow's critique, because its movement is virtual, in actuality a relationship between two lenses, the image of an image.
This realization adds the first of many new dimensions to come: by introducing the element of motion, specifically invisible motion like the hands of a clock, the filmmaker adds the temporal element to a composition that in all other respects appears static. Motion is the only phenomenon that allows perception of time; the motion here, like time, is wholly conceptual.
Minutes pass and we can notice subtle details.
69 (1968)
Breer's work has often focused on the mechanics of cinema and has featured hand drawn 4x6 index cards that are composed into formalist, repetitive studies, such as 69, which is so absolutely beautiful, so perfect, so like nothing else. Forms, geometry, lines, movements, light, very basic, very pure, very surprising, very subtle.
Like many of his generation, Breer's early work was influenced by the various European modern art movements of the early 20th century, ranging from the abstract forms of the Russian Constructivists and the structuralist formulas of the Bauhaus, to the nonsensible universe of the Dadaists.
Breer acknowledges his respect for this purist, cubist cinema, which uses geometric shapes moving in time and space.
Breer continued to search for historical perspectives in his work and discovered the color theories of Chevreul and Rood. He also began a series of minimalist pieces based on number series, which were nonfigurative and based on geometry and formal issues. 69 relyes on formalist images from his early research into color paintings.
Like many of his generation, Breer's early work was influenced by the various European modern art movements of the early 20th century, ranging from the abstract forms of the Russian Constructivists and the structuralist formulas of the Bauhaus, to the nonsensible universe of the Dadaists.
Breer acknowledges his respect for this purist, cubist cinema, which uses geometric shapes moving in time and space.
Breer continued to search for historical perspectives in his work and discovered the color theories of Chevreul and Rood. He also began a series of minimalist pieces based on number series, which were nonfigurative and based on geometry and formal issues. 69 relyes on formalist images from his early research into color paintings.
Les Oiseaux Blancs Les Oiseaux Noirs (2003)
Les Oiseaux Blancs Les Oiseaux Noirs is an African tale about wisdom, animated by Florence Miailhe. The story is based on a book by Amadou Hampaté Bâ about the work of Tierno Bokar and his African fable of good and evil. It explores how people live with good or bad feelings and how it is better to have good feelings towards others.
We are introduced to the two birds almost effortlessly as images merge together, break apart and metamorphose into different shapes or people. At one point as birds break away into a flock it is a genuine moment of sheer beauty. The black birds represent bad thoughts and words, white birds the opposite.
We are introduced to the two birds almost effortlessly as images merge together, break apart and metamorphose into different shapes or people. At one point as birds break away into a flock it is a genuine moment of sheer beauty. The black birds represent bad thoughts and words, white birds the opposite.
29
Mark Brown is currently happily re-exploring his world, visiting old friends and painstakingly documenting the strange flora and fauna that moved in while he was away.
Uliisses (1992)
Uliisses is a Homeric journey through the history of cinema. Its theme is based on the mythological Odysseus of Homer, the James Joyce's Ulysses, and the synthetic figure, Telemach/Phil, from the 24-hour-long piece The Warp by Neil Oram. Werner Nekes combines these figures, and he shows their stories. His central theme, however, is visual language in of itself: Odysseus/Bloom is transformed into Uli the Photographer, Penelope/Molly into his model and Telemach/Stephen into Phil, who begins his Telemachia.
The object of the odyssey is pictorial language as such: learning to see and wanting to see. It ranges from cinematographic archaeology to playful innovations of the latest kind.
There is no film technique that does not occur in this movie. Uliisses requires attentive viewing. The film's details disclose themselves only after one has seen it several times.
This short is an attempt to replicate in film some of the stylistic and technical innovations of Joyce's Ulysses, offering an anthology of cinematic techniques developed since the medium's inception.
The object of the odyssey is pictorial language as such: learning to see and wanting to see. It ranges from cinematographic archaeology to playful innovations of the latest kind.
There is no film technique that does not occur in this movie. Uliisses requires attentive viewing. The film's details disclose themselves only after one has seen it several times.
This short is an attempt to replicate in film some of the stylistic and technical innovations of Joyce's Ulysses, offering an anthology of cinematic techniques developed since the medium's inception.
Doc Atomic
Shawn McManus is an American artist who entered the comic book field in the early 1980s with work for Heavy Metal and DC Comics.
McManus gained wider attention when he illustrated two 1980s issues of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore. Since then he has drawn issues of Omega Men, Batman, Doctor Fate and a pair of limited series about the witch Thessaly written by Bill Willingham.
McManus gained wider attention when he illustrated two 1980s issues of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore. Since then he has drawn issues of Omega Men, Batman, Doctor Fate and a pair of limited series about the witch Thessaly written by Bill Willingham.
Wind (2006)
Wind, sponsored by Al Gore, is set to a poem by Antonio Machado and narrated by Alec Baldwin. This hauntingly beautiful film shows what we stand to lose if we continue to put the environment second to progress, but also shows that it is possible to put technological progress hand in hand with environmental preservation.
Chel White's narrative perspective is often that of the estranged individual; the outsider looking in. His films paint indelible pictures of the human experience. Described as both a black humorist and a cinematic poet, Chel White's work is intricate, sublime, and beautiful.
In this short, White uses time lapse photography to simultaneously display the majesty of nature and the destruction of humanity's footprint.
You can buy Fever Dreams and Heavenly Nightmares: The Short Films of Chel White
.
Chel White's narrative perspective is often that of the estranged individual; the outsider looking in. His films paint indelible pictures of the human experience. Described as both a black humorist and a cinematic poet, Chel White's work is intricate, sublime, and beautiful.
In this short, White uses time lapse photography to simultaneously display the majesty of nature and the destruction of humanity's footprint.
You can buy Fever Dreams and Heavenly Nightmares: The Short Films of Chel White
.
Dense (2005)
HC Gilje apply various techniques reflecting a manipulative attention, demonstrating that photography on its own, with lights, shadows and contrasts is able to equally tell the complexity of contemporary condition. Gilje shows sensitivities moulded in the places and time fragmentation, dense in perceptive stimuli and cross-references that, compared to historical avantgardes take advantage of the many sampling combinatorial possibilities.
Dense is a doublesided videoprojection on six vertical strips of half transparent material at different depths in a blackbox space. One projection creates downward movement and the other a movement from side to side, thus creating a video weave on the projection surface where the projections overlap. The audio is generated by the changes in the video, one a dry chirping sound which pans with the horizontal movement of the video, the other is created by the downward movements of the other video, creating a very loud, deep sound resonating in the space. Moving around in the space is like walking inside a videomixer, perception of image and sound changes dramatically as you move inside the installation.
You can buy Cityscape.
Dense is a doublesided videoprojection on six vertical strips of half transparent material at different depths in a blackbox space. One projection creates downward movement and the other a movement from side to side, thus creating a video weave on the projection surface where the projections overlap. The audio is generated by the changes in the video, one a dry chirping sound which pans with the horizontal movement of the video, the other is created by the downward movements of the other video, creating a very loud, deep sound resonating in the space. Moving around in the space is like walking inside a videomixer, perception of image and sound changes dramatically as you move inside the installation.
You can buy Cityscape.
Cozette (1977)
Arnolds Burovs animanted this short about Cosette, one of the carachter of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. In the nove, she's the daughter of Fantine, she is raised by Jean Valjean after her mother dies. She falls in love with Marius Pontmercy, and marries him at the end of the novel. For the first few years she is raised, she is used as a worker and beaten by the Thénardiers.
This stop motion is so elegant and beautiful, but personally I prefer the original version of Cosette.
This stop motion is so elegant and beautiful, but personally I prefer the original version of Cosette.
Trying to Kiss the Moon (1994)
Trying to Kiss the Moon is an autobiographical film-poem, which contains poignant home movie footage of his life in the US prior to the childhood polio attack which forced him to rely on crutches and eventually confined him to a wheelchair.
Dwoskin attempts to recreate his past by rendering impressions from his life using old film fragments from 20-odd hours of amateur home movies shot by his father. He stitches together his personal doc without following chronological structure.
The clips are from both color and B&W sources, some with sound, some without. Some scenes are occasionally narrated by Dwoskin himself. His friend and colleague, documentary and feature filmmaker Robert Kramer also contributes comments about the events.
These events are liberated and interwoven like an inner landscape framing one life: all life-connected and film-connected by personal associations and rediscovered fragments. Flashes, reflections and memories are situated like remnants in an old drawer, box or film can. The images are elaborate and extend the film's intimate and integral form of self and shared expression. The thoughts and anecdotes are presented in a multi-layered display that becomes an extension of the self, and the self as an extension of film. The overall expression is that of a filmic selfportrait one that is reflective and open ended.
This cognitive extraction of the multiple meaning intrinsic within images through the conscious manipulation of time is also reflected in Dwoskin's paintings.
This autobiography can be seen also as a cinema of implication in which the uncomfortable, extended gaze facilitates the process of interactivity that is intrinsic in the act of seeing.
You can buy Stephen Dwoskin 15 films box.
Dwoskin attempts to recreate his past by rendering impressions from his life using old film fragments from 20-odd hours of amateur home movies shot by his father. He stitches together his personal doc without following chronological structure.
The clips are from both color and B&W sources, some with sound, some without. Some scenes are occasionally narrated by Dwoskin himself. His friend and colleague, documentary and feature filmmaker Robert Kramer also contributes comments about the events.
These events are liberated and interwoven like an inner landscape framing one life: all life-connected and film-connected by personal associations and rediscovered fragments. Flashes, reflections and memories are situated like remnants in an old drawer, box or film can. The images are elaborate and extend the film's intimate and integral form of self and shared expression. The thoughts and anecdotes are presented in a multi-layered display that becomes an extension of the self, and the self as an extension of film. The overall expression is that of a filmic selfportrait one that is reflective and open ended.
This cognitive extraction of the multiple meaning intrinsic within images through the conscious manipulation of time is also reflected in Dwoskin's paintings.
This autobiography can be seen also as a cinema of implication in which the uncomfortable, extended gaze facilitates the process of interactivity that is intrinsic in the act of seeing.
You can buy Stephen Dwoskin 15 films box.
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