dinca.org

Ten Second Film, Bruce Conner, 1965, 10 sec, b&w, silent

Film Center of Lincoln Society :

“When Conner was commissioned to design the poster for the 1965 New York Film Festival he constructed TEN SECOND FILM, which he intended to act as its television commercial and to precede the film programs in the theater. It was a public ‘leader’ in that it was composed, like the poster, of a series of ten strips of film (each 24 frames long) of count-down leader, seen as fundamental heraldry of motion picture exhibition.” —Anthony Reveaux

2010 is yet another fantastic year for avant-garde film; yet another fantastic New York Film Festival: Views from the Avant-Garde film program. With this post, I will try my best to provide an organized, comprehensive schedule for the 2010 NYFF: Views from the Avant-Garde. Soon enough, I will add all respective links for filmmakers and venues. (Hopefully all have a website these days.) Check back — I’ll keep you posted.

Straight verbatim from the 2010 NYFF 2010 Views from the Avant-Garde Website:

Curated by Mark McElhatten and Gavin Smith. For its 14th year, Views offers an expanded edition, presenting four nights of New York and world premieres from the frontiers of innovative moving image making. Highlights include Robert Beavers’s The Suppliant, James Benning’s Ruhr, Nathaniel Dorsky’s Pastourelle, a restoration of Manoel de Oliveira’s Rite of Spring, and Phil Solomon’s three-screen American Falls. Also expect new work by Thom Andersen, Ute Aurand, Stephanie Barber, Mati Diop, David Gatten, Janie Geiser, Lewis Klahr, Dani Leventhal, Jeanne Liotta, Matt McCormick, Tomonari Nishikawa, Michael Robinson, Fern Silva, Deborah Stratman, Peter Tscherkassky and many others, plus nightly special Furman Gallery projection performances by Paul Clipson and Bruce McClure.

THURSDAY SEPT 30

6:30pm in the Furman Gallery
Pierre Clémenti: Inédite Bobines
“lost” reels from the 16mm films of actor-director Pierre Clémenti
France, c. 1965-75; 104m.

FRIDAY OCT 1

Noon
Jean-Marie Straub
O somma luce Jean-Marie Straub, France, 2009, 18m.
Corneille–Brecht Jean-Marie Straub & Cornelia Geise, France, 2009, 80m.

2:00pm
Helga Fanderl
Super 8 to 16mm blow-ups

//////// I ////////
Birds at Checkpoint Charlie (Vögel am Checkpoint Charlie)
East Berlin (Ostberlin)
Tunnel
From the Empire State Building (Aus dem Empire State Building)
Tortelloni
Wild Waters (Wilde Wasser)
Polar Bear (Eisbär)
18m.

//////// II ////////
Porte St. Denis
Columbus Circle
Rue Labat Mourning (Rue Labat in Trauer)
Mirrored Café (Spiegelcafé)
Hut (Hütte)
Tropical Garden in Spring Time (Jardin tropical im Frühling)
15m.

//////// III ////////
Portrait
Tea Time (Teetrinken)
Red Curtain (Roter Vorhang)
c. 7m.

//////// IV ////////
Dancing Water II (Wassertanz II)
For M. (Für M.)
Butterflies (Schmetterlinge)
After the Fire II (Nach dem Feuer II)
Sculpture and Water (Skulptur und Wasser)
15m.

//////// V ////////
Mist II (Nebel II)
Winklerweiher
Dancing Water I (Wassertanz I)
Mist I (Nebel I)
Künettegraben short (Künettegraben kurz)
Ingolstadt at Night (Ingolstadt nachts)
Oranges, Moon and Sun (Orangen, Mond und Sonne)
Cobwebs and Fishes (Spinnweben und Fische)
13m.

3.30pm
History is Homemade at Night: The Crazy, Beautiful World of Jeff Keen
Marvo Movie U.K., 1967, 5m.
Cineblatz, U.K., 1967, 3m.
Meatdaze U.K., 1968, 10m.
White Lite U.K., 1968, 3m.
Wail U.K., 1961, 5m.
Rayday Film U.K., 1968-1970/1976, 13m.
White Dust U.K., 1970-72, 33m.

5.30pm
Jennifer Montgomery
The Agonal Phase U.S., 2010, 42m.
Transitional Objects U.S., 2000, 19m.

7:30pm
Phil Solomon
American Falls U.S., 2010, 55m.
What’s Out Tonight Is Lost U.S., 1983, 8m.; new print – preservation by the Academy Film Archive

9:00pm
James Benning
Ruhr Germany/U.S., 2009, 120m.

SATURDAY OCT 2

12 noon
Mirror of Shadow and Cinders
Photofinish Figures (Il finish delle figure) Paolo Gioli, Italy, 2009, 9.12m.
A Thousand Julys Lewis Klahr, USA, 2010, 6.30m.
Marie Karen Yasinsky, USA, 2010, 5m.
Dissonant Manon de Boer, Netherlands/Belgium, 11m.
Ape of Nature Peggy Ahwesh, USA, 2010, 24m. double-screen version
The Soul of Things Dominck Angerame, USA, 2010, 15m.
Destination Final Philip Widmann, Germany, 2010 9m.
Valleys of Fear Erin Espelie, USA, 2010, 22m.
SHU (Blue Hour Lullaby) Philipp Lachenmann, Germany, 2008, 12m.

2:30pm
Station to Station
Crosswalk Jeanne Liotta, USA, 2010, 25m.
Servants of Mercy Fern Silva, Portugal/USA, 2010, 14m.
Rite of Spring (restoration) Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, 1963, 99m
Print courtesy of Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema,
presented in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art.

5:30pm
Visibility Unknown
The Flight of Tulugaq (O Voo de Tulugaq) André Guerreiro Lopes, Brazil, 8m.
New Year Sun Jonathan Schwartz, USA, 2010, 3m.
Trypps #7 (Badlands) Ben Russell, USA, 2010, 9.30m.
Burning Bush Vincent Grenier, USA, 2010, 9.5m
Materia Obscura Jürgen Reble, Germany 11.29m.
a loft Ken Jacobs, USA, 2010, 16m.
Mamori Karl Lemieux, Canada, 2010, 7.44m.
Union Paul Clipson, USA, 2010, 10m.
Parties visible et invisible d’un ensemble sous tension Emmanuel Lefrant, France, 2010, 7m.
Drifter Timoleon Wilkins, USA, 1996-2010, 26m.

8:15pm
Since You Were Here …
Dust Studies Michael Gitlin, USA, 2010, 9m.
Washes Norbert Shieh, USA, 2010, 8.40m.
Get Out of the Car Thom Andersen, USA, 2010, 35m.
Obscurando el Apartiemento Rosario Sotelo, USA, 2010, 3m.
Cry When it Happens (Llora cuando te pase) Laida Lertxundi, USA, 2010, 17m.
Night Shift Gretchen Skogersen, USA, 2010, 5m.
Future So Bright Matt McCormick, USA, 2010, 30m.

10:30pm in the Furman Gallery
Night Gallery – Turn on the High Beams I
two projection performances
Untitled Galaxy Paul Clipson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, 2010, 30m.
FIST I – IMPROPER FRICTIONS Bruce McClure, 2010, approx 30m

Sunday October 3

12 noon
Sea Scrolls
Atlantis Pieter Geenen, China/Netherlands, 2008, 11.18m.
Dining Cars Arianne Olthar, Netherlands, 2009, 15.5m.
Sea Series #7: Naufrage aux îles de Madeleine John Price, Canada, 2010, 3.39m.
Atlantiques Mati Diop, Senegal/France, 2009, 11m.
Distance Julie Murray, USA, 2010, 12m.
Travelogue Vincent Grenier, USA, 2010, 8.8m.
Shrimp Boat Log David Gatten, USA, 2010, 6m.
Blue Mantle Rebecca Meyer, USA, 2010, 34m.

2:30pm
Landing on the Edge
Place for Landing Shambavi Kaul, USA, 2010, 6m.
Hearts are Trump Again Dani Leventhal, USA, 2010, 14m.
Ray’s Birds Deborah Stratman, USA, 2010, 7m.
In the Absence of Light, Darkness Prevails Fern Silva, Brazil/USA, 2010, 13m.
Slave Ship T. Marie, USA, 2010, 4m.
Someone Should Be Happy Here April Simmons, USA, 2010, 5m.
THE HUNCH THAT CAUSED THE WINNING STREAK AND FOUGHT THE DOLDRUMS MIGHTILY Stephanie Barber, USA, 2010, 1.53m., 4.5m.
Razor’s Edge Stephanie Barber and Xav LePlae, USA, 2010, 44m.

4:30pm
Séance
bust chance Stephanie Barber, USA, 2010, 7m.
Love Rose Bobby Abate, USA, 2010, 13.7m.
Kindless Villain Janie Geiser, USA, 2010, 5m.
So Sure of Nowhere Buying Times to Come David Gatten, USA, 2010, 9m.
April Snow Lewis Klahr, USA, 2010, 10m.
Facts Told at Retail (after Henry James) Erin Espelie, USA, 2010, 7m.
Ghost Algebra Janie Geiser, USA, 2009 7.5m.
Tokyo–Ebisu Tomanari Nishikawa, Japan, 2010, 5m.
Possessed Fred Worden, USA, 2010, 8m.
These Hammers Don’t Hurt Us Michael Robinson, USA, 2010, 13m.

6.30pm
Song Cycle
Pastourelle Nathaniel Dorsky, USA, 2010, 16.5m.
Ouverture Christopher Becks, France, 2010, 5m.
The Suppliant Robert Beavers, USA/Switzerland, 2010, 5m.
Hanging upside down in the branches Ute Aurand, Germany, 2009, 15m.
Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 323: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST David Gatten, USA, 2010, 20m.
In a Year with 13 Deaths Jonathan Schwartz, USA, 2008, 3m.
One Eve Heller, USA/Austria, 2010, 4m.
Shibiyu-Tokyo Tomanari Nishikawa, Japan, 2010, 10m.
Beneath Your Skin of Deep Hollow Malena Szlam, Chile/Canada, 2010, 3m.
Gesturings Peter Herwitz, USA, 2010, 5m.
Day Dream Jim Jennings, USA, 2010, 7m.

8:30
Fatal Attractions: An Introduction to Black and White Magic
These Blaezing Starrs Deborah Stratman, USA, 2010, 14.4m.
Tranquility Sigfried A. Fruhauf, Austria, 2010, 6.30m.
To Another Josh Mabe, USA, 2010, 48sec.
Sugar Slim Says Lewis Klahr, USA, 2010, 7m.
Sorry Luther Price, USA, 2010, 14m.
Shutter Alexi Mani, Canada, 2009, 7m.
Floor of the World Janie Geiser, USA, 2010, 8m.
Toads Milena Gierke, Germany, 1997/2008, 6m.
Pigs Pavel Wojtasik, U.S., 2010, 7.45m.
Shadow Cut Martin Arnold, Austria, 2010, 4m.
Coming Attractions Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2010, 23.40m.
Total running time: 105.5m

10:30pm in the Furman Gallery
Night Gallery – Turn on the High Beams II
two projection performances
Crescent Paul Clipson & Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, 2010, 30m.
FIST II – INTO A SOTSPOT Bruce McClure, 2010, approx 30m.

More:

2010 NYFF Views from the Avant-Garde website

Deborah Stratman: Tactical Uses of a Belief in the Unseen
26 August to 16 October, 2010

Venue: Gahlberg Gallery McAninich Arts Center
Reception: 26 August 2010, 6:00pm–8:00pm
Address: 425 Fawell Blvd, Glen Ellyn, IL 60137

This installation draws upon the ecological effects of vibration and the history of sonic warfare. At root is an interest in the way sound both makes and disturbs place. Its very nothingness seduces us. Historically, sound has been an ideal medium for the performance of psychological warfare because of how efficiently it evokes events and locations. Whether declarative, as with anthems or artillery, or deceptive, as with sonic decoys or surveillance, the audiosphere is well disposed to militarization.

Inside the gallery, aural encounters occur in two strains: one territorial, where sound travels through the ground walked upon, as much felt as heard, the other aerial, as a sonic beam that occasionally sweeps the visitor unannounced like a wandering ghost. A third Aeolian harp element will occur outside the Art Center. This will be a wire made to resonate by the wind, and so aleatory by nature.

More:

Pythagoras Film

Ben Russell + Joe Grimm – Mazes /  La Casa Encendida, Madrid

September 3 · 8:00pm – 9:00pm

Museum of Contemporary Art

220 East Chicago Avenue

Chicago, Illinois

Chicago premiere. Presented in conjunction with the UBS 12×12 Exhibition: BEN RUSSELL (free to those attending the First Fridays opening):

After touring extensively through Europe with PEACE NOISE and appearing at festivals in Bordeaux and Madrid in their newest incarnation, light-noise duo MAZES come to the MCA for their first Chicago performance. Positioned behind a fistful of audio circuits and a pair of 16mm film projectors,… media artist Ben Russell sprays white light in pulsating patterns onto your optic nerves, shaping sound and eyebeam with fingers/hands that intercede between lens and screen. A photon’s throw away, sound artist Joe Grimm weaves a tangle of hand-built electronics into a skin of noise, a further manifestation of light pattern and intensity as real time audio. Light is sound is light, cause and effect and chaos and hypnosis, again and again and again. — Ben Russell

All My Life (1966) by Bruce Baillie

© Bruce Baille // found via Anthology Film Archives

Click here to visit Bruce Baillie’s website.

Peter Hutton (At Sea, 2007, Skagafjordur, 2003, Looking at the Sea, 2001), an eminent experimental filmmaker from Michigan, visited the Screening Room Series, in March 1977, to screen excerpts from his films and discuss his experiences with filmmaking and education; Hutton is interviewed by Robert Gardner. Gardner is a eminent visual anthropologist who is widely known for his 1965 ethnographic film, Dead Birds (1965). Throughout the years, Dead Birds has functioned as essential referential material and a common case study in the world of anthrology, visual anthropology, and ethnographic filmmaking. Dead Birds in referenced in essential ethnographic readings, including Karl Heider’s book, Ethnographic Film, and Jay Ruby’s book, Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology. (Click here to visit Gardner’s website.)

Gardner developed and hosted The Screening Room, and the program ran from 1972–1981. The Boston-based program offered independent filmmakers an opportunity to screen and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) affiliate station. Gardner interviews the filmmakers in a minimal-intellectualist setting that’s somewhat comparable to the aesthetics of the Charlie Rose show. The Screening Room also featured filmmakers Robert Breer, John Whitney SR, Jean Rouch, Jonas Menkas, Bruce Baillie, Jan Lenica, John and Faith Hubley, Emile DeAntonio, Ricky Leacock, Yvonne Rainer and Michael Snow, and other notables.

In this interview, excerpts from Hutton’s films include: July ’71 in San Francisco (1973), Images of Asian Music (1973-1974), Florence (1975), New York Near Sleep for Saskia (1972), and footage from New York Portrait: Chapter One (1978–1979). (Click here to view Peter Hutton’s filmography.)

The featured video above is only an 11 minute excerpt; the original episode ran 72 minutes, and is available as a digital download, rental or purchase, from the Documentary Educational Resources website. Enjoy!

L’Internationale, Excerpt from Marianna Milhorat.

Here is a 48 second excerpt from Marianna Milhort‘s L’Internationale, which won Best Experimental Film at the 2010 Chicago Underground Film Festival. Marianna primarily works with 16mm film; she is a Montréal-based filmmaker.

Sound Over Water, Mary Helena Clark, USA, 2009, 6m; 16mm, color/black & white, sound

A film by Baltimore-based filmmaker, Mary Helena Clark.

Synopsis: The sky and the sea meet in a deep blue underwater evocation on 16mm. Floating particles, schools of fish and film emulsion converge.

a beach (2010) | click to enlarge

Hey ya’ll East-Siders: my two-part film, a beach (2010), will be wavin’ simultaneously on two monitors at the Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media, as part of Refresh, “an exhibition of video and animation work that explores an alternative aesthetic in digital media artwork.” … “Refresh features a group of artists that all ask the viewer to reevaluate our collective definition of digital beauty and the value we place on visual quality in contemporary culture.”

The opening reception is tomorrow, 23 July, 2010, and the exhibit will sit pretty 23 July – August 28th, 2010. Artists in the show include: Nick Briz (Chicago), Michelle Ceja (NY), Clint Ennis (Canada), Elna Frederick (the internet), Doug Goodwin and Rebecca Baron (Los Angeles), Duncan Malashock (NY), Rosa Menkman (a Dutch-visualist DINCA recently interviewed, the Netherlands), Andrew Rosinski (Chicago), and Nicolas Sassoon (Canada).

  This exhibition is curated by Yuri Stone.

REFRESH

23 July – 28 August, 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, July 23, 6-9pm

Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media is pleased to present Refresh, an exhibition of video and animation work that explores an alternative aesthetic in digital media artwork. Refresh features a group of artists that all ask the viewer to reevaluate our collective definition of digital beauty and the value we place on visual quality in contemporary culture.

Spanning from 8bit and ascii animations to manipulated digital video, this exhibition creates an aesthetic and conceptual dialogue that allows us to question conventions of digital media in our society as well as our relationship to new and past technology.  The artists included in this exhibition evoke notions of nostalgia, document unintended artifacts, and push the boundaries of the ↓field by experimenting with new technologies.  In doing so, these artists create a refreshingly alternative digital practice that functions outside of the mainstream aesthetic.

More:

Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media
Refresh Exhibit Page
Nick Briz
Michelle Ceja
Elna Frederick
Doug Goodwin and Rebecca Baron
Duncan Malashock
Rosa Menkman
Andrew Rosinski
Nicolas Sassoon

Please spread the word of this exhibit by clicking the “Share/Save” button below. Great thanks, and remember: this summer, take a break and beat the heat by visiting a beach.
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This post embeds two lovely music videos by Ben Russell, an eminent Chicago-based experimental filmmaker, known for his Black and White Trypps series and the recent experimental ethnopgraphy, Let Each One Go Where He May (2009). There are a number of reasons why these two films defy a classification, namely, they are captured on film, not video. Black and White Trypps Number Three (2007, embedded below) was shot on 35mm; Rock Me Amadeus by Falco Via Kardinal by Otto Muehl (2009, embedded above) was shot on 16mm film. Whether it be 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, black/white or color, a music video shot on film looks volumes better than a music video shot on video. Film captures sunlight on celluloid; film is warm.

The above video is an avant-garde kareokee performance between filmmaker Ben Russell and Celeste Neus. The film observes the sticky-synergy between the two as they rock to Falco’s lengendary 1983 hit “Rock Me Amadeus.” This film ponders humiliation of some sort — preparation, then humiliation — other than that, it’s strikingly similar to the original Falco video. Five Stars, verily.

Black and White Trypps Number Three captures a live-performance from Providence-based band Lightning Bolt. Although we’re at the show, we only catch a glimpse of the two-piece band, that being the neck of a bass guitar. We don’t see the band; we see the audience, we hear the music, and we see how the music affects the audience.

They say film can only capture sight and sound; however, these films capture more. Plus, music can speak louder than words. If you haven’t heard Lightning Bolt, try listening to the mp3s below — they bring the light from above to the below. It’s a heavy feeling in a good whey.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Chromatic Cocktail, 2008, 9 min

Synopsis: The vibrant, abstract spirals of Kerry Laitala’s experiments with chromovision leap off the screen in pulsating 3-D.  — San Francisco International Film Festival

Entre dos mundos from Banda TRANSIT

“In the beginning was the sea … and when a man or a woman, falls from the sky to the sea, the game starts or restarts …”

Watching this is highly recommended. It is a visceral montage from Banda TRANSIT, dubbed Entre dos mundos — my roommate, Juan, says that translates as, “Between two worlds.” Makes sense, haha, it’s part of the titular line.

This is a montage of coalescing images of big waves, beach footage, driftwood, and a man whom jumps into the water and climbs the rocky cliff neighboring a beach. The opening shot is from Peter Hutton’s At Sea, a film I pine to sea in its entirety, and footage from the great Maya Deren’s At Land, and footage from Vimukthi Jayasundara’s Between Two Worlds.

Synopsis: This video contains footage from At Land (Maya Deren, 1944), At Sea (Peter Hutton, 2007), and Between Two Worlds (Vimukthi Jayasundara, 2009). They try to illustrate a divulgative and creative text about Deren’s, Hutton’s and Jayasundara’s productions. It doesn’t exist any profit motive in mind. (Covadonga G. Lahera for (cinentransit.com)

(more…)

Two days left for the Chicago Underground Film Festival. They have already announced the award-winners. Above is the trailer for the CUFF; I think it’s a darn neat trailer.

IFP Chicago presents:

The 17th Chicago Underground Film Festival
June 24th – July 1st
at the Gene Siskel Film Center
http://www.cuff.org/

Trailer by Jon Satrom

Saul Levine, 1969, 8mm, 7 min, silent, color

The edit is the impetus for Saul Levine’s silent seven minute short, A Note to Pati (1969). With his jaunty edit, Levine creates a unique juxtaposition of weltering, home video imagery with brush cutting gat-gat image tracing. Levine’s edit, with alacrity, leavens the film into a visual visual poem, which otherwise would simply be a few dusty 8mm reels of an individual’s home memories.

The edit is the vise of this film, and this surely is a technical edit, therefore let’s briskly analyze this film afore.

Film editor’s curiosity compelled me to watch the film multiple times while tallying the number of film splices. Clearly, it’s impossible to get an exact number, but according to my tally averaged, the film has approximately 400 splices — this is wild — this is a seven minute film.

The duration of the film is 6:51; and let’s say the film contains a 400 number of splices; 400 splices. Ripping it with math, we’ll round 6:51 to seven minutes and divide that by 400 — this equals one splice per 1.75 seconds.

Here we see the divergence of experimental/underground/avant-garde film from the Hollywood or mainstream independent film. Mainstream film editors, on occasion, have reign to experiment with the edit here and there, obligations attached, affecting their edit in a tame manner, constricting it to moments, 1-10 seconds, because they have to play it safe, because they have to ‘keep the story moving’ ‘long. Avant-garde film is A-1 because there’s experimentation, and experiments lead to discovery and newfound creation, and newfound creation is boundless — it can enkindle all sorts of tropes, and emotions, and might even dust some dusty glyphs and dusty arcana.

It’s apparent that Levine had scant amount of footage to work with, and arguably this project may have started as an editing exercise for Levine, but what is evident is that Levine’s edit leavens this footage into ink which pens a letter visual letter to a girl. Perhaps he writes to the titular Patti, perhaps he writes this letter to others or everyone, perhaps this letter is perennial.

Levine writes a letter and this letter is a letter of human movement, progress, it pushes forward. In his letter, he paints, splats, and crosscuts between images observing the movement of children whereabouts wintry white hills and the snowy front of a homestead; particular focus drawn on a child in red, and a lingering shot of a bird in a tree. The mise-en-scène of the film is a punctuating red against snow white — red and purity — linked with the sturdy, organic color of brown. Mother earth. Mother Earth earth and whatever place we feel at home.

The film lingers most on the images of the child in red, the movement and shoveling and excavating of snow,  children with snow, and the bird in the tree. Gluing this imagery together is the splicing of black leader flashes, film splice marks, deformed celluloid, and sometimes 1 to 5 frames of weltering camera movements of extreme-close-ups that tumble all over the screen, throwing eye-tracers hither and thither.

Near the end is an image sequence worth ponder: children sledding; the main child in red frolics in the snow, lots of forward movement, and subsequently the child is warm-washed by sunlight.

In the closing shot, the standalone treetop bird flies away toward something. The same closing shot caps with a pan-left to the sturdy trunk of a tree, solidly rooted in the earth’s soil.

From a narrative standpoint, Levine’s letter is multivalent; however, the editing in A Note to Patti constructs a lovely letter of human progress, writing of the parallel existence of human life and all life housed by mother earth; a friendship us humans, consciously or subconsciously, share with mother earth and all living creatures. That is one person’s subjective interpretation vis-a-vis this film stripped of its constructivist edit just be an old, dusty 8mm home movie.

More:

Saul Levine on Vimeo

Saul Levine on Mubi (formally the auteurs)

Harvard Film Archive: Recent Restorations, including the films of Saul Levine

7 Frames from Harry Smith’s Oz: The Tin Woodman’s Dream (1967)

Found via Anthology Film Archives

© Anthology Film Archives

A whooping 56 films by Stan Brakhage in one luxurious box set

Dog Star Man (1964)

Just a friendly reminder that Stan Brakhage is on blu-ray, and standard definition, with The Criterion Collection‘s recent release, by Brakhage: An Anthology, Volumes One and Two.

The box set contains three discs and compiles the previously released by Brakhage: An Anthology Volume One with the ripe Volume Two. As expected, Criterion dressed it with gorgeous artwork; sheer decadence; mouth watering. The titling on the artwork is a scan-replication of Brakhage’s white paint signature on black-leader, which appeared on the tail end of his films. (It might be a white grease-pen signature, please correct me if I’m wrong.)

Volume One featured 26 Brakhage films; Volume Two features 30 films, from 1950s films to his closing films of the ’00s. Therefore, this release contains a whooping grand total of 56 films by Stan Brakhage; however, Brakhage’s work is 350+ films in breadth. That leaves 294 Brakhage films yet to see a blu-ray release. As expected, Criterion includes copious supplements, including an essay by Brakhage expert, Fred Camper, whose work was recently featured on this site.

View the details on this release, the films included, watch a film clip, or purchase this release by clicking this link. Sidenote: read this brief Brakhage interview where Stan shares his thoughts on video, and how the Sundance Channel aired Dog Star Man (1961–’64), his epic trilogy, in 2001.

Criterion Collection Synopsis:

Working outside the mainstream, the wildly prolific, visionary Stan Brakhage made more than 350 films over a half century. Challenging all taboos in his exploration of “birth, sex, death, and the search for God,” he turned his camera on explicit lovemaking, childbirth, even autopsy. Many of his most famous works pursue the nature of vision itself and transcend the act of filming. Some, including the legendary Mothlight, were created without using a camera at all, as he pioneered the art of making images directly on film, by drawing, painting, and scratching. With these two volumes, we present the definitive Brakhage collection—fifty-six of his works, from across his career, in high-definition digital transfers.

More:

By Brakhage: The Act of Seeing by Fred Camper
Before the Beginning was the Word: Stan Brakhage’s
Stan Brakhage Filmography (via Fred Camper)