DINCA » experimental film

Sound Over Water (2009) by Mary Helena Clark

Andrew Rosinski — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 06:40:02 +0000

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 in Boston, July 23rd – August 28th: Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:29:54 +0000

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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A Music Video Like None Other: Black and White Trypps Number Three by Ben Russell

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 06:17:01 +0000

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.

Download audio file (2-towers.mp3)

Download audio file (crown-of-storms.mp3)

Download audio file (fleeing-in-the-valley-of-whirling-knives.mp3)

Four Frames: Chromatic Cocktail by Kerry Laitala

Andrew Rosinski — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 16:10:55 +0000

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

Three Frames: Orbit by Kerry Laitala

Andrew Rosinski — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 14:33:08 +0000

2006, 9 min, 16mm, hand-made soundtrack

Synopsis: Candy apple light emissions create a series of photic stimulating events that tickle the retinas. Orbit takes one into the realm of the mistake…. a playful pulsation of mis-registered images made when a lab accidentally split the film from 16mm to regular 8. This format was then reconstituted on the optical printer making the colors and contrast further blow out into the atmosphere. Kodachrome color fields create tremulous vibrations whose flickerings hypnotize.

The Kodachrome Series, of which Orbit is a part, deals directly with chromatic motion studies and creates an illusion of frozen light fields; holding light captive and exploring the phenomenon of retinal afterimage. The soundtrack is comprised of the flutterings of optical noise reverberating to the splices of the film that is intermixed with hand drawn extensions of the visual plane onto the soundtrack area. By combining a series of abstract shapes with permanent marker, the rhythm and tempo of the image is directly enhanced through this mark making process. The fanciful sputterings crackle and snap, tickling the tympanum of the eardrums. We enter through the oval window, while the Gravitron spins eternally.

— LA Film Forum

Short Notes on the CUFF

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:34:10 +0000

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

The Importance of Editing in the Avant-Garde: A Note to Pati (1969) by Saul Levine

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:10:47 +0000

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: Oz: The Tin Woodman’s Dream (1967)

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:02:18 +0000

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

Found via Anthology Film Archives

Brakhage on Blu-Ray

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 31 May 2010 04:41:24 +0000

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)

Experimental Film Achievements of the 21st Century: Avant-Garde Poll: Film Society of the Lincoln Center

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 24 May 2010 04:03:12 +0000

January 2010: The Film Society of the Lincoln Film Center conducts an avant-garde film and video poll:

FSLFC’s Preface: In the past decade, the making and showing of experimental film worldwide has gone from strength to strength, so much so that it can be categorically said that avant-garde cinema is as vital now as it has ever been. This addendum to our Jan/Feb end-of-decade wrap-up serves to acknowledge just some of the experimental film achievements of the 21st century’s first 10 years. The rankings on the three lists below were obtained through the tabulation of the number of mentions a given film or filmmaker received in poll responses from a 46-strong group of critics, programmers, and teachers.

Poll participants: Acquarello, Steve Anker, Thomas Beard, Ariella Ben-Dov, Amy Beste, Robin Blaetz, Nicole Brenez, Autumn Campbell, Fred Camper, Abigail Child, David Dinnell, Patrick Friel, David Gatten, Jacqueline Goss, Ed Halter, Alexander Horwath, Kristin M. Jones, Chris Kennedy, Nellie Killian, Lewis Klahr, Irina Leimbacher, Scott MacDonald, Matt McCormick, Mark McElhatten, Kevin McGarry, Don McMahon, Olaf Möller, Oona Mosna, Pablo de Ocampo, Susan Oxtoby, Andréa Picard, Tony Pipolo, Steve Polta, J.R. Rigsby, Jeremy Rossen, Lynne Sachs, Keith Sanborn, Michael Sicinski, Josh Siegel, P. Adams Sitney, Gavin Smith, Phil Solomon, Scott Stark, Chris Stults, Jim Supanick, Genevieve Yue

THE RESULTS

At Sea (2007) by Peter Hutton

BEST AVANT-GARDE FILMS & VIDEO 2000-2009

1. At Sea Peter Hutton, U.S., 2007 (18)
2. Pitcher of Colored Light Robert Beavers, U.S./Switz., 2007 (16)
3. ( ) Morgan Fisher, U.S., 2003 (15)
tie Ah Liberty! Ben Rivers, U.K., 2008 (15)
tie Observando el Cielo Jeanne Liotta, U.S., 2007 (15)
tie Star Spangled to Death Ken Jacobs, U.S., 1956-2004 (15)
7. Ten Skies James Benning, U.S., 2004 (14)
8. The Fourth Watch Janie Geiser, U.S., 2000 (13)
tie The Heart of the World Guy Maddin, Canada, 2000 (13)
tie RR James Benning, U.S., 2007 (13)
11. Black and White Trypps Number Three Ben Russell, U.S., 2007 (12)
tie The Decay of Fiction Pat O’Neill, U.S., 2002 (12)
tie The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him Stan Brakhage, U.S., 2002 (12)
tie An Injury to One Travis Wilkerson, U.S., 2002 (12)
tie Kolkata Mark LaPore, US/India, 2005 (12)
tie 13 Lakes James Benning, U.S., 2004 (12)
17. The General Returns from One Place to Another Michael Robinson, U.S., 2006 (11)
tie Song and Solitude Nathaniel Dorsky, U.S., 2006 (11)
19. False Aging Lewis Klahr, U.S., 2008 (10)
tie The Glass System Mark LaPore, U.S., 2000 (10)

tie Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2005 (10)
tie A Letter to Uncle Boonmee Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand, 2009 (10)
tie She Puppet Peggy Ahwesh, U.S., 2001 (10)
tie Skagafjördur Peter Hutton, U.S./Iceland, 2004 (10)
25. As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty Jonas Mekas, U.S., 2000 (9)
tie The Great Art of Knowing David Gatten, U.S., 2004 (9)
tie The Ground Robert Beavers, U.S., 1993-2001 (9)
tie The Hedge Theater Robert Beavers, U.S./Switzerland, 2002 (9)
tie Poetry and Truth Peter Kubelka, Austria, 2003 (9)
tie Sarabande Nathaniel Dorsky, U.S., 2008 (9)
tie The Visitation Nathaniel Dorsky, U.S., 2002 (9)
tie When It Was Blue Jennifer Reeves, U.S./Iceland, 2008 (9)
33. Arbor Vitae Nathaniel Dorsky, U.S., 2000 (8)
tie In Comparison Harun Farocki, Germany/Austria, 2009 (8)
tie It’s Not My Memory of It – Three Recollected Documents The Speculative Archive U.S., 2003 (8)
tie Meditations on Revolution, Part V: Foreign City Robert Fenz, U.S., 2003 (8)
tie Nest of Tens Miranda July, U.S., 2000 (8)
tie O’er the Land Deborah Stratman, U.S., 2009 (8)
tie Psalm III: Night of the Meek Phil Solomon, U.S., 2002 (8)
tie Winter Nathaniel Dorsky, U.S., 2008 (8)
41. California Trilogy: Los, Sogobi, El Valley Centro James Benning, U.S., 2000-01 (7)
tie *Corpus Callosum Michael Snow, Canada, 2002 (7)
tie Dream Work (for Man Ray) Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2001 (7)
tie Horizontal Boundaries Pat O’Neill, U.S., 2008 (7)
tie Let Each One Go Where He May Ben Russell, U.S./Suriname, 2009 (7)
tie Still Raining, Still Dreaming Phil Solomon, U.S., 2009 (7)
tie The Two Minutes to Zero Trilogy Lewis Klahr, U.S., 2003-04 (7)
tie What the Water Said, nos. 4-6 David Gatten, U.S., 2007 (7)

Filmmaker David Gatten, aka Number 8

TOP 50 FILMMAKERS

1. Nathaniel Dorsky (54)
2. James Benning (49)
3. Ken Jacobs (45)
4. Lewis Klahr (41)
5. Stan Brakhage (37)
tie Phil Solomon (37)
7. Robert Beavers (35)
8. David Gatten (32)
tie Peter Hutton (32)
10. Michael Robinson (30)
11. Ernie Gehr (29)
tie Ben Russell (29)
13. Mark LaPore (27)
14. Ben Rivers (24)
15. Janie Geiser (23)
tie Jeanne Liotta (23)
17. Luther Price (21)
18. Jennifer Reeves (20)
19. Pat O’Neill (19)
20. Apichatpong Weerasethakul (18)
21. Peggy Ahwesh (17)
tie Stephanie Barber (17)
tie Vincent Grenier (17)
tie Jim Jennings (17)
tie Peter Tscherkassky (17)
tie Fred Worden (17)
27. Guy Maddin (16)
tie Bruce McClure (16)
tie Julie Murray (16)
30. Morgan Fisher (15)
31. Scott Stark (14)
tie Deborah Stratman (14)
tie Travis Wilkerson (14)
34. Harun Farocki (13)
tie Jonas Mekas (13)
36. Bruce Conner (12)
tie Robert Fenz (12)
tie Michael Snow (12)
tie Leslie Thornton (12)
40. Heinz Emigholz (11)
tie Miranda July (11)
42. Eve Heller (10)
tie Michelle Smith (10)
tie The Speculative Archive (10)
45. Jacqueline Goss (9)
tie Nicky Hamlyn (9)
tie Peter Kubelka (9)
tie Sharon Lockhart (9)
tie Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet (9)
tie Jim Trainor (9)

25 FILMMAKERS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

(emerging artists beyond the top 50)

1. Tomonari Nishikawan (23)
2. Jim Finn (15)
3. Daichi Saito (13)
4. Luis Recoder & Sandra Gibson (11)
tie Alexandra Cuesta (11)
tie Kevin J. Everson (11)
tie Laida Lertxundi (11)
8. Shiho Kano (10)
tie Vanessa O’Neill (10)
10. Paul Chan (9)
tie Paul Clipson (9)
tie Emily Richardson (9)
tie Sylvia Schedelbauer (9)
14. Minyong Jang (8)
tie Hannes Schüpbach (8)
tie Fern Silva (8)
tie Gretchen Skogerson (8)
tie Ryan Trecartin (8)
tie Soon Mi Yoo (8)
20. Bobby Abate (7)
tie Chris Kennedy (7)
tie Andrew Lampert (7)
tie Matt McCormick (7)
tie Rebecca Meyers (7)
tie Jonathan Schwartz (7)

More:

Film Society of the Lincoln Film Center: Avant-Garde Poll (official post)

The Film Society of the Lincoln Center

7 Frames: Mirror Animations by Harry Smith (1957)

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 14 May 2010 02:56:04 +0000

7 STILLS

Mirror Animations, Harry Smith, 1957

found via Anthology Film Archives

7 Frames: Peyote Queen (1965) by Storm de Hirsch

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:51:33 +0000

7 still frame film scans from “Peyote Queen.”

found via Anthology Film Archives

Stan Brakage Radio Interview

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:17:30 +0000

Pauline Kael interviews Stan Brakage, radio interview, 20 min, 1964(?)

/////// PLAY \\\\\\\

At times, Pauline Kael seems to be Stan Brakage’s adversary, especially during her questioning of his artistic process, and his understanding of his work versus the understanding/misunderstanding of the viewer, to which Brakhage replies, “I don’t make films for an audience … I make them for myself.” This interview is low-fidelity; nonetheless, a pleasant window into the avant-garde art scene of the early ’60s. If you are not familiar with Brakhage and his breadth of work, it is a good listen anyway. Dog Star Man is discussed 16 minutes in.

From the Anthology Film Archives:

Legendary film critic Pauline Kael is captured here in conversation with filmmaker Stan Brakhage. While the tape is incomplete, we do hear Brakhage defend his practice, his epic film DOG STAR MAN, his influences, his search for “a happening in structure”. Brakhage proudly declares: “I’m an amateur filmmaker, I make home movies.” (7″ IPS, 1/4″ REEL 5″, 00:19:32)

Click here for more Stan Brakhage audio recordings.

Thoughts on Richard Kerr’s Action: Study (2009)

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:37:33 +0000

2009, 16mm to DV, b/w, 5 min

Action: Study opens with a young silhouette, the silhouette of Richard Keer’s daughter, as she frolics in front of an expansive body of water. This is an action study on film vis-a-vis a hyper-action study of the human body, humans, and water. The action is captured with a shaky, hand-held 16mm camera, and is exposed on a high-speed film stock (high sensitivity to light); this renders grainy and noisey, hyper-contrast black and white imagery — arguably, this draws close focus on nodes of light and dark, and forms of water and human.

Music dins. The momentum of Kerr’s cathexis steams. The inherent story streams and splashes. Kerr’s deconstruction of action seemingly leads to his daughter melding with water, present in a sequence of where the young daughter is superimposed with the body of water — perhaps the daughter is being infused with water. The images flicker and weave; the daughter melds with water and the water embraces the the body of the daughter, perhaps the existence of the daughter, perhaps the spirit of the daughter.

Action: Study appears to be one of those brilliant films where the story unfolds itself; the filmmaker is the one who takes time to go fishing, fish for the story, hook it, and reel it out of the unknown and into our world of existence, for all of us to watch, react, ponder, and interpret.

Action: Study opens tropes of unity: the unity of water and daughter; the unity of human and water.

More:

Richard Kerr’s Official Website

richard kerr on vimeo

Early Computer Generated Video Art: Sunstone (1979) by Ed Emshwiller

Andrew Rosinski — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:54:11 +0000

Ed Emshwiller and Alvy Ray Scott, 1979, 16mm, 3m

Born in Lansing, Michigan, and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Ed Emshwiller (1925-1990) was a pioneer in the development of video technology. He was one of the first to experiment with synthesizers and computers in his quest to ‘sculpt with technology.’ Sunstone (1979) is film version of computer animation: it was made using a digital paint program at New York Institute of Technology — a collaboration between Emshwiller and Alvy Ray Smith. Sunstone exhibited at many places, including SIGGRAPH ’79 in Chicago, New York’s WNET television show video/film Review, 1979, and the Mill Valley Film Festival, Mill Valley, California, 1981. Originally released as a videotape.

Synopsis: Sunstone is a prime example of Emshwiller’s artful use of technology to create stunning images. A timeless face, carved from stone as a ‘third eye’, appears radiating color and forms that are computer generated.

Ed Emshwiller and Alvy Ray Smith work on Sunstone at NYIT in 1979

Biography (from the Video Data Bank):
Born in 1925, Ed Emshwiller studied graphic design at the University of Michigan and L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. By the late ’60s Emshwiller was working as a science fiction illustrator, and had established his place in the American avant-garde cinema with such works as Relativity (1966) and Image, Flesh and Voice (1969). His early films featured collaborations with dancers and choreographers—a theme he carried over into his videoworks. As both an artist and a teacher, Emshwiller’s pioneering efforts to develop an alternative technological language in video were enormously influential.

His early experiments with synthesizers and computers included the electronic rendering of three-dimensional space, the interplay of illusion and reality, and manipulations of time, movement, and scale that explore the relationship between “external reality and subjective feelings.” Emshwiller was among the first artists-in-residence at the TV Lab at WNET, where he produced the groundbreaking Scape-mates (1972). Sunstone (1979) was made over a period of eight months at the New York Institute of Technology. Emshwiller passed away in 1990 and an extensive collection of his work is housed by Anthology Film Archives.

Illustration by Ed Emshwiller

Alvy Ray Smith on making Sunstone with Emshwiller:
Ed was an abstract expressionist when young, then did early avant-garde 16mm filmmaking, then became one of the earliest video artists. He also made a name for himself in the 1950s illustrating the covers of early science fiction magazines (which he signed “Emsh”). I knew of him because he lived near NYIT on Long Island, in Levittown. I expected that if he were the artist I thought he was – out on the edges of the culture exploring – he would show up at our lab one day. He did, of course. His proposal to us, that he use his new Guggenheim grant, to make a 3-hour computer graphics movie, sent us into gales of laughter, much to his consternation (after all, he was trying to talk his way into our facility). We explained that he would be lucky, in his 6-month timeframe, to make a 3-minute film, considering the state of the technology. Sunstone is that piece, and it is a little more than 3 mintues long, including a live (digitally processed) video section.

This collaboration was the most important of my artistic life, Ed serving as my mentor. And I am still most pleased with this computer graphic work over all others I have been involved in with partners. We used one frame from the video as the cover of a very well-known computer graphics text by Foley and van Dam.
Created at NYIT in Old Westbury, Long Island, in 1979.

More:

Video Data Bank: Ed Emshwiller
Expanded Cinema: Ed Emshwiller
Alvy Ray Smith on the Sunstone Collaboration
Wikipedia: Ed Emshwiller

La Jetée (text) by Chris Marker

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:47:43 +0000

Click here to print this text

A transcription of Chris Marker’s 1962 masterpiece, La Jetée.

La Jetée | This is the story of a man, marked by an image from his childhood. The violent scene that upset him, and whose meaning he was to grasp only years later, happened on the main jetty at Orly, the Paris airport, sometime before the outbreak of World War III.

Orly, Sunday. Parents used to take their children there to watch the departing planes.

On this particular Sunday, the child whose story we are telling was bound to remember the frozen sun, the setting at the end of the jetty, and a woman’s face.

Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. Later on they do claim remembrance when they show their scars. That face he had seen was to be the only peacetime image to survive the war. Had he really seen it? Or had he invented that tender moment to prop up the madness to come?

The sudden roar, the woman’s gesture, the crumpling body, and the cries of the crowd on the jetty blurred by fear.

Later, he knew he had seen a man die.

And sometime after came the destruction of Paris.

Many died. Some believed themselves to be victors. Others were taken prisoner. The survivors settled beneath Chaillot, in an underground network of galleries.

Above ground, Paris, as most of the world, was uninhabitable, riddled with radioactivity.

The victors stood guard over an empire of rats.

The prisoners were subjected to experiments, apparently of great concern to those who conducted them.

The outcome was a disappointment for some – death for others – and for others yet, madness.

One day they came to select a new guinea pig from among the prisoners.

He was the man whose story we are telling.

He was frightened. He had heard about the Head Experimenter. He was prepared to meet Dr. Frankenstein, or the Mad Scientist. Instead, he met a reasonable man who explained calmly that the human race was doomed. Space was off-limits. The only hope for survival lay in Time. A loophole in Time, and then maybe it would be possible to reach food, medicine, sources of energy.

This was the aim of the experiments: to send emissaries into Time, to summon the Past and Future to the aid of the Present.

But the human mind balked at the idea. To wake up in another age meant to be born again as an adult. The shock would be too great.

Having only sent lifeless or insentient bodies through different zones of Time, the inventors where now concentrating on men given to very strong mental images. If they were able to conceive or dream another time, perhaps they would be able to live in it.

The camp police spied even on dreams.

This man was selected from among a thousand for his obsession with an image from the past. Nothing else, at first, put stripping out the present, and its racks.

They begin again.

The man doesn’t die, nor does he go mad. He suffers.

They continue.

On the tenth day, images begin to ooze, like confessions.

A peacetime morning. A peacetime bedroom, a real bedroom. Real children. Real birds. Real cats. Real graves.

On the sixteenth day he is on the jetty at Orly. Empty.

Sometimes he recaptures a day of happiness, though different.

A face of happiness, though different.

Ruins.

A girl who could be the one he seeks. He passes her on the jetty. She smiles at him from an automobile. Other images appear, merge, in that museum, which is perhaps that of his memory.

On the thirtieth day, the meeting takes place. Now he is sure he recognizes her. In fact, it is the only thing he is sure of, in the middle of this dateless world that at first stuns him with its affluence. Around him, only fabulous materials: glass, plastic, terry cloth. When he recovers from his trance, the woman has gone.

The experimenters tighten their control. They send him back out on the trail. Time rolls back again, the moment returns.

This time he is close to her, he speaks to her. She welcomes him without surprise. They are without memories, without plans. Time builds itself painlessly around them. Their only landmarks are the flavor of the moment they are living and the markings on the walls.

Later on, they are in a garden. He remembers there were gardens.

She asks him about his necklace, the combat necklace he wore at the start of the war that is yet to come. He invents an explanation.

They walk. They look at the trunk of a redwood tree covered with historical dates. She pronounces an English name he doesn’t understand. As in a dream, he shows her a point beyond the tree, hears himself say, “This is where I come from …” – and falls back, exhausted. Then another wave of Time washes over him. The result of another injection perhaps.

Now she is asleep in the sun. He knows that in this world to which he has just returned for a while, only to be sent back to her, she is dead. She wakes up. He speaks again. Of a truth too fantastic to be believed he retains the essential: an unreachable country, a long way to go. She listens. She doesn’t laugh.

Is it the same day? He doesn’t know. They shall go on like this, on countless walks in which an unspoken trust, an unadulterated trust will grow between them, without memories or plans. Up to the moment where he feels – ahead of them – a barrier.

And this was the end of the first experiment.

It was the starting point for a whole series of tests, in which he would meet her at different times. Sometimes he finds her in front of their markings. She welcomes him in a simple way. She calls him her Ghost.

One day she seems frightened. One day she leans toward him. As for him, he never knows whether he moves toward her, whether he is driven, whether he has made it up, or whether he is only dreaming.

Around the fiftieth day, they meet in a museum filled with timeless animals. Now the aim is perfectly adjusted. Thrown at the right moment, he may stay there and move without effort.

She too seems tamed. She accepts as a natural phenomenon the ways of this visitor who comes and goes, who exists, talks, laughs with her, stops talking, listens to her, then disappears.

Once back in the experiment room, he knew something was different. The camp leader was there. From the conversation around him, he gathered that after the brilliant results of the tests in the Past, they now meant to ship him into the Future. His excitement made him forget for a moment that the meeting at the museum had been the last.

The Future was better protected than the Past. After more, painful tries, he eventually caught some waves of the world to come. He went through a brand new planet, Paris rebuilt, ten thousand incomprehensible avenues. Others were waiting for him. It was a brief encounter. Obviously, they rejected these scoriae of another time.

He recited his lesson: because humanity had survived, it could not refuse to its own past the means of its survival. This sophism was taken for Fate in disguise.

They gave him a power unit strong enough to put all human industry back into motion, and again the gates of the Future were closed.

Sometime after his return, he was transferred to another part of the camp. He knew that his jailers would not spare him. He had been a tool in their hands, his childhood image had been used as bait to condition him, he had lived up to their expectations, he had played his part. Now he only waited to be liquidated with, somewhere inside him, the memory of a twice-lived fragment of time.

And deep in this limbo, he received a message from the people of the world to come. They too traveled through Time, and more easily. Now they were there, ready to accept him as one of their own. But he had a different request: rather than this pacified future, he wanted to be returned to the world of his childhood, and to this woman who was perhaps waiting for him.

Once again the main jetty at Orly, in the middle of this warm pre-war Sunday afternoon where he could not stay, he though in a confused way that the child he had been was due to be there too, watching the planes.

But first of all he looked for the woman’s face, at the end of the jetty. He ran toward her. And when he recognized the man who had trailed him since the underground camp, he understood there was no way to escape Time, and that this moment he had been granted to watch as a child, which had never ceased to obsess him, was the moment of his own death.

Originally posted here at markertext.com

More:

markertext.com

TREES ARE DOWN (2008)

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:17:17 +0000

Andrew Rosinski, 4 min, found footage, 2008

Synopsis: A feverish montage-meditation on the national identity of American Citizens, the culture and trends of American consumerism, the relationship of man to machine, and the abstract relation of machine + wilderness. Americans define their individuality and lifestyle through their consumerism; corporations create sub-cultures, niches, and they market and sell this lifestyle, sending the consumer concealed messages that we need to buy the best to be the best.

Supplementary Notes: Taking a bathroom break from chopping wood out at my cabin, I discovered a number of VHS tapes buried inside a chest.

The catalyst of this project was during the Summer of 2008 when I visited the family cabin to help my father chop wood and haul brush. Later on, I was digging through a bin of antiquated VHS tapes — I soon stumbled upon a handful of snowmobile, ATV, and chain-saw instructional videos. I immediately knew that I wanted to cut up and mash these materials into a short, 4-6 minute film. I also wanted to experiment with faux branding (e.g. the Ginga, Dinca, Chooga, and Targis logos featured in the film).

However, as I reviewed the footage, I realised that the material was far more mundane than I initially had expected. I knew what I wanted to create: An ugly — and embellished — trash bag filled with American video trash-timber porn. After multiple screenings, I began cutting, and after multiple edits, the film was completed.

With heavy image manipulation, experiments in frame size, deconstruction, and juxtaposition, Trees seeks to explore trends in consumerism — e.g. the thought processes of the deliberating potential consumer, their weighing thoughts, how they come to make the big purchase.

DINCA Tv

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:22:49 +0000

I want my DINCA Tv!

Please visit the official DINCA Tv Vimeo channel. DINCA Tv is your station for sacred visions internet nation. All videos posted on DINCA will be added to DINCA Tv; however, if the video is not available on vimeo, it will not stream on DINCA Tv. Unfortunately, not all videos are available on vimeo (… yet).

If you are a registered vimeo member, you can subscribe to DINCA Tv, and you will be alerted immediately after a new video has been DINCAdded to the channel. You can sign up for free here.

Click here to watch DINCA Tv.

DINCA: Favorite Films of 2009: Part II

Cowboys Were Not Nice People (1990)

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:53:28 +0000

Larry Kless, 1990, 7 min, 16mm

Artist’s Statement: I produced this art film in 1990 completely on an optical printer reshooting 16mm film frame by frame. It won awards at various film festivals and was screened internationally. Here’s the artistic description, “History paints a heroic picture of the so-called “cowboys” of history. Using the hero as a metaphor to questions his validity, this film explores the mythical frontiers of western culture and the romanticism of colonialism.”

Larry Kless on Vimeo

No related posts.

Stan Brakhage Film Scans and Frame Enlargements: The Mega Thread (Source: Fred Camper)

Andrew Rosinski — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:21:38 +0000

Stan Brakhage, Coupling (1999), 16mm, 5 min, color, silent

Stan Brakhage, Purgation / The Dante Quartet (1987), 6 min, 35mm / 16mm, color, silent

Stan Brakhage, Coupling (1999), 16mm, 5 min, color, silent

Stan Brakhage, Mothlight (1963), 16mm, 3 min, color, silent

Stan Brakhage, Existence is Song / The Dante Quartet (1987), 16mm & 35mm, 6 min, color, silent

Stan Brakhage, Purgation / The Dante Quartet (1987), 6 min, 35mm / 16mm, color, silent

The Chartres Series (1994), 9 ½ min, color, silent

A year ago, I stumbled upon a website that had a fantastic surplus of Stan Brakhage film scans, reviews, Brakhage’s writing, and transcriptions of Brakhage’s lectures. I pulled plenty of Brakhage film scans to my desktop — time passed, and I forgot the source of these scans — and I have periodically DINCAblogged these gorgeous scans, and the source never got accredited … that is, until now.

The source is Fred Camper’s website, and I apologize for not accrediting it earlier. Camper’s website is a Brakhage gold mine and an invaluable resource. Let us enjoy the beauty of Stan Brakhage’s work.

Stan Brakhage, Purgation / The Dante Quartet (1987), 6 min, 35mm / 16mm, color, silent

Stan Brakhage, Coupling (1999), 16mm, 5 min, color, silent

Stan Brakhage, Mothlight (1963), 16mm, 3 min, color, silent

More:

Stan Brakhage Film Stills

Stan Brakhage Filmography

A General Introduction to Brakage’s Work

Transcripts of “The Test of Time”, 20 radio programs on film, music, and literature broadcast in 1982, also available in the original radio show form as mp3 sound files.

Experiments in Cinema v5.1 2010 Film Festival Schedule

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:33:46 +0000

Experiments in Cinema 2010 V5.1 schedule

The 2010 Experiments in Cinema v5.1 film festival schedule has been announced. Continue reading to see the complete schedule of films, complete with venues and time slots. For more, visit the official Experiments in Cinema website here.

4/10/2010 Kimo Theater (regional youth program)

Experiment 1:

Youth Development Incorporated
Public Academy for Performing Arts
Albuquerque Academy
Media Arts Collaborative Charter High School

……………………………………………………………………………….

4/14/2010 Guild Cinema

Experiment 2 (6pm-6:55pm): 49min

458 Teslamania Joel Schlemowitz, 6 min, New York, 16mm, 2007
378 The Vase Jeremy Newman, 1 min, New Jersey, 2009
494 Walking Under The Sun Diana Fonseca, 3 min, Cuba, 2007
278 2 Home Movies Masha Godovannaya, 9 min, Russia, World premiere, 2009
407 A Diamond Forms Under Pressure Paul ODonoghue, 6 min, Ireland, 2008
344 A Pattern of Prophecies Laurel Ann Petty, 6min, New Mexico, 2009
294 Way Fare Sylvie Schedlbauer, 6 min, Germany, 2009
349 Dromosphere Thorsten Fleisch, 10 min, Germany, 2009

……………………………………………………………………………….

Experiment 3 (7:10-8:05pm): 48min

258 Open House Diane Nerwen, 31 min, New York, 2009
305 Making An Arab Girl Hannah Hollander, 10 min, California, 2009
268 Into Daylight SJ Ramir, 5 min, Australia, US premiere, 2009
429 Smoking Eliseo Ortiz Menchaca, 1.5 min, Mexico, 16mm, 2009

……………………………………………………………………………….

Experiment 4 (8:20-9:15pm): 46min

267 Common Ground Vera Brunner-Sung, 27 min, California, 2008
449 Road Not Taken Linda Scobie, 7 min, California, 16mm, 2009
363 Sea Front Stuart Moore, 6 min, England, US premiere, 2009
415 Auto-Pilot Charles Lum, 3 min, New York, 2005, clublum@verizon.net
343 The Eternal Wink Eytan Ipeker, 2 min, Turkey, US premiere, 2009
411 Untitled (2 axes) Tim MConville, 2 min, New York, 2009

……………………………………………………………………………….

4/15/2010 National Hispanic Cultural Center (Bank of America Theater) Thursday
Historias Mínimas/Minimal Stories presented by Montse Badia – visiting curator from Barcelona

……………………………………………………………………………….

Experiment 5 (7pm-8:30pm)

4/16/2010 Dept Cinematic Arts

UNM – 16mm filmmaking workshop – Kerry Laitala — 11am-3pm

……………………………………………………………………………….

4/16/2010 Southwest Film Center Friday

Experiment 6 (6pm-6:50pm): 45 min

380 Imprint Cecilia Araneda, 6 min, Canada, 2007
289 You Have Not Found His Riddle Yaron Lapid, 12 min, England, 2003
389 We Interrogate The Detainees Heidi Neubaurer-Winterburn, 10min, France, 2009
463 The Unemployees Rafael, 5 min, Germany, World premiere, 2009
456 Vienna In The Desert Wago Kreider, 4.5min, Illinois, 2007
486 Abstract? Alexei Dmitriev, 3.5min, Russia, 2009
323 The Chambered Nautilus Vanessa Woods, 4min, California, 2009

……………………………………………………………………………….

Experiment 7 (7:05pm-7:55pm): 47.25min

470 Lovemaking Vienne Chan, 1.25min, Canada, World premiere, 2009
333 Terrifying Blankness David Finkelstein, 30min, New York, 2008
492 Portrait 2: Trojan Vanessa Renwick 4min, Oregon, 2008
402 Devour Ben Popp, 5min, Oregon, World premiere, 2009
346 Charades Ann Steurnagel, 7min, Massachusetts, 2009

……………………………………………………………………………….

Experiment 8 (8:10-9:15pm)

Isabel Fondevila presentation- (director, ATA festival)

……………………………………………………………………………….

4/17/2010 Dept of Cinematic Arts

UNM – audio workshop – Chris McNamara
11-3pm

……………………………………………………………………………….

4/17/2010 Guild Cinema Saturday

Experiment 9 (3:00-4:30pm)

Gerry Fialka – visiting curator presentation (founder PXL This Festival)

……………………………………………………………………………….

Experiment 10 (6pm-6:50pm): 43.5min

375 Lay Claim to An Island Chris Kennedy, 13min, Canada, 2009
281 Places Change Taylor Lane, 5.5min, New Mexico, World premiere, 2009
472 San Quentin Katherine McInnis, 10min, New York, 2009
360 Ground Play Robert Todd, 12min, Massachusetts, 16mm, 2009
455 Dropping Furniture Harold Hund/Paul Horn, 5min, Austria, 2008

……………………………………………………………………………….

4/17/2010 continued

Experiment 11 (7:05-7:55pm): 44min

444 1/48 Jorge Lorenzo, 1 second, Mexico, 35mm, 2007
490 Scene 32 Shambhavi Kaul, 5min, North Carolina, 2009
308 Eight Women Laura Bouza, 29min, California, World premiere, 2009
445 These Wicked Men Ertrock 1.25min Wisconsin, World premiere, 2009
303 Oh, How Sad Maite Abella, 8.75min, Netherlands, World premiere, 2009

……………………………………………………………………………….

Experiment 12 (8:10-9:15pm)

Chris McNamara – visting curator presentation (founder of Media City festival)

……………………………………………………………………………….

4/18/2010 Guild Cinema Sunday

Experiment 13 (noon – 1:05pm)

Bart Weiss – visiting curator presentation (director, Dallas Video Festival)

……………………………………………………………………………….

Experiment 14 (1:20-2:10pm): 47.5min

491 Metamorphosis David Lebrun, 14 min, California, 2009
428 Found: Nothing Missing Patricia McInroy, 3 min, New Mexico, 2009
264 Journey to Q’xtlan Peter Rose, 7.5min, Pennsylvania, 2009
316 Lost in the Flood Doug Katelus, 11min, California, 16mm 2009
285 The Commoners Penny Lane, 12min, New York, 2009

……………………………………………………………………………….

Experiment 15 (2:25-3:15pm) 48min

392 Afterimage: A Flicker Of Life Kerry Laitala, 11 min, California, 2009
314 Trypps 6 Ben Russell, 12min, Illinois, 16mm, 2009
325 The Conversation With Dr. Mouse Sook Hyun Kim, 10min, NYC/South Korea, 2007
340 Slap The Gondola Marie Losier, 15 min, New York, US premiere

……………………………………………………………………………….

More:

The Official Experiments in Cinema Website

This List Portrays the Symbolic Exchange of Gifts from the Universal Space Beings to the Beings of Earth

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:12:57 +0000

A week or so ago, Bad Lit, a journal of underground film, wrote this thoughtful post pertaining to the process of the underground film blogger. Mike Everleth of Bad Lit has been blogging for almost four years now, wow. Amen to running an underground film blog for four years; it’s widely published that the majority of bloggers throw in the towel after six months.

Cyber-blogging takes an enormous amount of time, and sometimes you may feel as though soaking wet in virtual reality, with liquid aluminum splashin’ and hittin’ the flow, forming metallic puddles — notwithstanding, cyber-blogging is a great time, when you have the time, and time is too expensive.

With this post, I wish to follow in the footsteps of Mike by posting a simple list of experimental/avant-garde/underground film blogs — call them whatever you like — there is a perpetual divergence of the genre definitions, but the fact is, blogs such as these are far, far, few and far between.

I encourage anyone to add a site/blog via comment, just make sure the site correlates with the aforementioned. Let us strengthen the online community of underground/experimental film sites; more people should be exposed to these. Spread the lynx around

A LIST OF UNDERGROUND/EXPERIMENTAL FILM SITES 11.FEB.2009

Art Cinematic
The Auteurs Notebook
Bad Lit
Bright Lights Film Journal
Cineflyer
Cinemad
Conversations at the Edge
ChrisMarker.org
Create Digital Motion
Destructural Video
DINCA
Donal Foreman
Everything is Terrible!
Expanded Cinema
Experimental Cinema
Experimental Conversations
Facets Multimedia
Incite!
Krebs on Security
Invisible Cinema
Landscape Suicide
La Region Central
LUX Blog
Making Light of It
More Milk Yvette
Not Dead Yet (I Love 16mm)
Recycled Images
Rhizome
Senses of Cinema
Snuff Box Films
Supposed Aura
Tank TV
Ubu Web Video Data Bank
Visionary Film
Visiones Metaforicas

You have reading to do

Wie kreeg een tijger? 2010 International Rotterdam Film Festival Award Winners

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:25:30 +0000

It would have been a great pleasure to have attended the 2010 International Film Festival of Rotterdam. The esteemed festival has always supported the most vanguard works of world cinema — firstly, if you’re a filmmaker and your work is selected as part of Rotterdam’s program, that’s a landmark achievement — secondly, if you’re a filmmaker and your film walks away with an award, you just entered the pinnacle of your career. Regardless of awards, if your film screens, you are a winner.

Ben Russell, a Chicago-based filmmaker, served as delegate of the Chicago underground film scene at the 2010 Rotterdam Film Festival, and his lengthy ethnographic film Let Each One Go Where He May, a film that was also nominated for a Tiger Award, walked away with the FIPRESCI award, an award that is decided by international film critics (B.R. representing Chi Chi!). Congratulations, Ben Russell.

Deborah Stratman, a Chicago-based filmmaker, was another representative of the Chicago underground film scene, with her short documentary Walking is Dancing screening as part of the Signals- Where is Africa program.

This post serves as a simple rundown of the 2010 tiger award winners, mostly because I could not find a rundown list of award winners on the official Rotterdam Film Festival website.

And the feature-length winners are:

Go With the Flow (Agua fría de mar) by Paz Fábrega

Synopsis: A young Costa Rican couple on holiday discover one evening a seven-year-old girl who has run away, yet the next morning, when they want to take her back to her camping parents, she has disappeared again. This leads to a confrontation between two women of different ages and social status in a spot that is ostensibly paradise.

What the Jury Said: Concerning Agua fría de mar, the jury said that the film ‘succeeded in telling the story of a mysterious relationship between a woman and a young girl in a convincing and poetic manner. The film takes the audience on an unusual journey through a nature that interacts with people in a magical way. The superb editing ensures an organic flow of images, whilst the strong directing and disturbing atmosphere create tension.’

And the short film winners are:

Condolences (Wel Wen) by Ying Liang (China),

Atlantiques by Mati Diop (France/Senegal)

Wednesday Morning Two A.M. by Lewis Klahr (USA).

And the other winners are:

From the IRFF:

This year there were fifteen films up for the VPRO Tiger Awards, which were either debuts or second films from novice directors. The three winners will each get €15,000. This year the jury consisted of director Amat Escalante, actress Jeanne Balibar, director Urszula Antoniak, former director of the Singapore film festival Philip Chea and the Ugandan actor, musician, scriptwriter and activist Okello Kelo Sam.

As well as the Tiger Awards, other prizes were announced. The KNF award, a prize from the Circle of Netherlands Film Journalists, was awarded to a film that is not yet available for distribution in the Netherlands: Norteado from Mexican director Rigoberto Pérezcano. According to the jury this is ‘a film that touched our hearts and minds with its high visual qualities, terrific acting and gripping story about the plight of illegal immigrants that try to get into the United States.’

The FIPRESCI award from international film critics was given this year to Let Each One Go Where He May from Ben Russell, a film that was also nominated for a VPRO Tiger Award. The prize rom the network for promoting Asian film, NETPAC, was given to the Korean film Moscow from Whang Cheol-Mean. (SM)

Submit to the 2010 Chicago Underground Film Festival

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:05:06 +0000

The Chicago Underground Film Festival is now accepting submissions for their 2010 festival. The deadlines are approaching fast — if you’re interested in submitting, you have about one month.

The renowned underground film festival is a fantastic opportunity for underground, independent, and experimental film/video makers to screen their work in front of an audience of staunch patrons of the avant-garde. Legendary film critic, Roger Ebert, praises the festival as being a hell of a deal, stating “What you get for your money is not just admission to the films but admission to a subculture”, and another Chicago Tribune film critic, Michael Wilmington, regards the festival as being “Defiantly independent and deliberately scandalous.”

In the past, the CUFF has featured the works of Ben Russell, Deborah Stratman, and has presented retrospectives of Kenneth Anger, George Kuchar, John Waters, Larry Cohen, and Alejandro Jodorowsky. And there’s music too — The Ponys, Joan of Arc, Bobby Conn & The Glass Gypsies, Plastic Crimewave Sound, The Cheater Slicks, The Demolition Doll Rods, Califone, Frontier, Red Red Meat, The Handsome Family,The Wesley Willis Fiasco, Maureen Tucker, The Gaza Strippers and the Waco Bros have performed at past festivals. Folks, we’re talking about a party for the arty.

The 2010 CUFF will be held June 24-July 1 at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Visit CUFF.org for more information, submission forms, and a link to their withoutabox page.

The deadlines:

Early submissions: March 1, 2010, $30 entry fee

Final deadline for submissions: March 15, 2010, $40 entry fee

Plus, if you win an award, you get an ill trophy or medallion.

Brief Thoughts on Film and Video Editing: Number One by Leighton Pierce

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:11:54 +0000

2007, 10:05, HDV/mini-DV/DVD. color, stereo sound

Leighton Pierce, an experimental filmmaker from Iowa City, Iowa, created this wondrous work back in 2007, way back when Sundance actually considered true experimental works, rather than just saying they do, and Number One appropriately found acclaim — and acclaim from the big festivals — Sundance, Tribeca, San Francisco International, Hong Kong Film Festival, Montreal Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and it won the First Place Award at the Black Maria Film Festival. Leighton Pierce’s Number One film won Number One film — verily apposite!

Number One represents Pierce as being an eclecticist — and an editor who paints with a soft bush — who blends a wide array of images plucked from nature. Abstractions are the result of frame deconstruction, experiments in frame size and shape, the re-assemblage of the frame, and the juxtaposing movements of on-screen action and hand-held POV camera movements.

After viewing Number One, most will acknowledge the importance of its edit — any viewer, regardless of their film knowledge, detects that this is an outstanding edit, and they’re right — Pierce is a soigne film editor and I’m sure he has logged the hours. Only God knows how many hours were spent rendering fx, and re-editing, and then re-rendering, and re-rendering.

But all that rendering is worthwhile, because Pierce assembles complex frames, by way of advanced matting, masking, and time-displacement techniques. A complex, layered canvas is birthed — beautiful symmetry forms; nature incurs a face; liquid-fluid audio and shoreline rocks slow time; symmetry is exposed; and this film stands reminded of the symmetrical world we live in.

More:

Leighton Pierce’s Official Website

Leighton Pierce on Vimeo

Senses of Cinema: Leighton Pierce: “Master Miniaturist”

Rentals via Canyon Cinema

The Short Films of Guy Maddin: It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today (Video)

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:03:24 +0000

Guy Maddin’s The Heart of the World (2000)

In the world of cinema, the early career of a filmmaker typically is that of the short film. During this momentous filmmaking period, the filmmaker normally produces 5, 10, sometimes 15 shorts films; the work of this period may bring success, failure, or a little of both, but these are trivial matters; the experimenting of this period is what takes precedence; the filmmaker logs invaluable time in experimentation, and in these experiments, the filmmaker starts to chase a certain aesthetic, a certain vision, certain motifs, and certain peculiarities; the filmmaker will continue to chase these ideas throughout his or her entire career, and this is the chase that will define the filmmaker’s career. In other words, short films are important.

In regards to the short film, Guy Maddin is a unique case — he often produces a handful of short-films between the release of his feature-length films; most directors say adiós to the short-film after they become a feature-length film director; however, a large chunk of Maddin’s prolific filmmaking career is composed of short films — Maddin’s short and feature-length films rarely differ in greatness.

Maddin, a renowned filmmaker from Canada, is best know for his feverish hyper-expressionist films, namely, My Winnipeg (2007), Careful (1992), The Heart of the World (2000), The Saddest Music in the World (2003), and Brand Upon the Brain! (2006). These are films that draw influence from — and pay homage to — the surrealist films of the 1920s and ’30s and the German-expressionist films of the 1920s and ’30s, and Maddin often pay tribute to the silent film; sometimes Maddin films are black and white, some are a mix of black and write with dashes of color, and if his films do have sound, Maddin, to varying extents, pursues a low fidelity sound, i.e. that of the early talky films, the ’50s Fredrico Fellini film, and so forth.

Starting with this post, DINCA will periodically be posting video of Guy Maddin short films in their entirety.

It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today (2008)

A film by Guy Maddin (2008, Canada, 5 min, B/W)

Today we feature It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today, a five minute short that was featured in the supplements on the Criterion Collection’s release of Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain!.

The film follows a man and his eggs, a birdcage, chirping birds, and dust covered chirping children, all presented through a frantic and dizzying edit. According to Maddin, this is to serve as a short biopic on the castrato know as the Manitoba Meadowlark, Don Houle, who performed on tour with Brand Upon the Brain.

Enjoy! More Guy Maddin shorts to be posted soon.

Obscure Harry Smith Film Stills and Artwork

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:58:29 +0000

Harry Smith, Still from Film #11: Mirror Animations, ca. 1957, 3 min, 16 mm, color, sound. © Harry Smith Archives. From Harry Smith, Getty Publications.

Harry Smith was many things psychedelic — he made psychedelic films and art that dealt with the occult, he was a shaman in residence at the Naropa institute — and while living in San Francisco, Smith began to build a reputation as “one of the leading American experimental filmmakers.” Here are some obscure film stills and artwork of Harry Smith, originally posted here at the Harry Smith Archives and Flavorwire.

BIO (Getty Harry Smith Symposium webpage):

HARRY SMITH (1923-1991) | Harry Smith was an artist whose activities and interests put him at the center of the mid twentieth-century American avant-garde. Although best known as a filmmaker and musicologist, he frequently described himself as a painter, and his varied projects called on his skills as an anthropologist, linguist, and translator. He had a lifelong interest in the occult and esoteric fields of knowledge, leading him to speak of his art in alchemical and cosmological terms.

Harry Smith was born May 29, 1923, in Portland, Oregon, and his early childhood was spent in the Pacific Northwest. Smith’s father, Robert James Smith, was a watchman for the local salmon canning company. His mother, Mary Louise, taught school on the Lummi Indian reservation. Robert Smith’s grandfather had been a prominent Freemason who was a Union General in the Civil War. Harry’s parents were Theosophists, who exposed him to a variety of pantheistic ideas, which persisted in his fascination with unorthodox spirituality and comparative religion and philosophy. By the age of 15, Harry had spent time recording many songs and rituals of the Lummi and Samish peoples and was compiling a dictionary of several Puget Sound dialects. He later became proficient in Kiowa sign-language and Kwakiutl. In addition to developing complicated systems for transcription, he also amassed an important collection of sacred religious objects, one of a number of museological endeavors that occupied Smith throughout his life.

Smith studied anthropology at the University of Washington for five semesters between 1943 and 1944. After a weekend visit to Berkeley, during which he attended a Woody Guthrie concert, met members of San Francisco’s bohemian community of artists and intellectuals, and experimented with marijuana for the first time, Smith decided that the type of intellectual stimulation he was seeking was unavailable in his student life.

Still from Film #18: Mahagonny, 1970-1980 (restored, 2002), 141 min. 35 mm, color, sound. © Harry Smith Archives. From Harry Smith, Getty Publications.

It was in San Francisco that Smith began to build a reputation as one of the leading American experimental filmmakers. He showed frequently in the “Art in Cinema” screenings organized by Frank Stauffacher at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Smith not only became close with other avant-garde filmmakers in the Bay Area, such as Jordan Belson and Hy Hirsh, but traveled frequently to Los Angeles to see the films of Oskar Fischinger, Kenneth Anger, and other Southern Californians experimentalists. Smith developed his own methods of animation, using both stop motion collage techniques and, more uniquely, hand-painting directly on film. Often a single film required years of painstakingly precise labor. While a few other filmmakers had employed similar frame-by-frame processes, few matched the complexity of composition, movement, and integration in Smith’s work. Smith’s films have been interpreted as investigations of conscious and unconscious mental processes, while his fusion of color and sound are acknowledged as precursors of sixties psychedelia. At times, Smith spoke of his films in terms of synaethesia, the search for correspondences between color and sound and sound and movement.

Harry Smith, Untitled, circa 1977, oil and pen on board, 28 x 36 in

Smith’s films cannot be easily separated from his paintings, and in both he was influenced by the abstract work of Kandinsky, Marc, and others who formed the foundation of the collection of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later the Guggenheim Museum) in New York. Smith developed a relationship with Hilla Rebay, the museum’s director, and she arranged for Smith to come to New York and to receive a Solomon Guggenheim grant in 1950. He moved to New York permanently in the early fifties. In need of money, he offered to sell his extraordinary record collection of American vernacular music to Folkways Records. Instead, Moses Asch, the label’s president, challenged Smith to cull his collection into an anthology.

Buddha’s Footprint

“Three fish with one head — a sign of Buddhahood incised in giant stone carving of Buddha footprint found under Bo Tree at Bodh Gaya, mythological Indian site of the Buddha’s realization.”

Allen Ginsberg statement from Collected Poems 1947-1980
Allen Ginsberg noticed this design, known as Buddha’s footprint, on a wall in India in the 1960s. He commissioned Harry Smith to draft this design for use on his Collected Poems and subsequent book covers.

In 1952 Folkways issued Smith’s multi-volume Anthology of American Folk Music. The Anthology was comprised entirely of recordings issued between 1927 (the year electronic recording made accurate reproduction possible) and 1932, the period between the realization by the major record companies of distinct regional markets and the Depression’s stifling of folk music sales. Released in three volumes of two discs each, the 84 tracks of the anthology are recognized as having been a seminal inspiration for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960 (the 1997 reissue by the Smithsonian was embraced with critical acclaim and two Grammy awards). Traditional American music was only one of Smith’s musical interests. From the late 1940s, he was a passionate jazz enthusiast, going so far as to create paintings that are note-by-note transcriptions of particular tunes. He spent much of the fifties in the company of jazz pioneers like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk. Smith’s involvement with recording continued into the sixties and seventies as he produced and recorded the first album by the Fugs in 1965. His long term friendships with many of the Beat writers led to the release of Allen Ginsberg’s First Blues in 1976 as well as unreleased recordings of Gregory Corso’s poetry and Peter Orlovsky’s songs. Smith spent part of this era living with groups of Native Americans, and this resulted in his recording the peyote songs of the Kiowa Indians (Kiowa Peyote Meeting, Folkways, 1973).

Smith’s broad range of interests resulted in a number of collections. He donated the largest known paper airplane collection in the world to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. He was a collector of Seminole textiles and Ukrainian Easter Eggs. He also considered himself the world’s leading authority on string figures, having mastered hundreds of forms from around the world.

Smith spent his last years (1988-1991) as “shaman in residence” at Naropa Institute, where he offered a series of lectures, worked on sound projects, and continued collecting and researching. In 1991 he received a Chairman’s Merit Award at the Grammy Awards ceremony for his contribution to American Folk Music. Upon receiving the award, he proclaimed, “I’m glad to say my dreams came true. I saw America changed by music.”

Harry Everett Smith died at the Chelsea Hotel on November 27, 1991.

More:

Harry Smith Symposium Site | Getty

Harry Smith Archives

Flavorwire: Daily Dose Pick: Harry Smith

DINCA » experimental film

Sound Over Water (2009) by Mary Helena Clark

a beach in Boston, July 23rd – August 28th: Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media

REFRESH

23 July – 28 August, 2010

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

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. ⇊⇊

A Music Video Like None Other: Black and White Trypps Number Three by Ben Russell

Four Frames: Chromatic Cocktail by Kerry Laitala

Three Frames: Orbit by Kerry Laitala

Short Notes on the CUFF

The Importance of Editing in the Avant-Garde: A Note to Pati (1969) by Saul Levine

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

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

Brakhage on Blu-Ray

Experimental Film Achievements of the 21st Century: Avant-Garde Poll: Film Society of the Lincoln Center

THE RESULTS

At Sea (2007) by Peter Hutton

BEST AVANT-GARDE FILMS & VIDEO 2000-2009

TOP 50 FILMMAKERS

25 FILMMAKERS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

7 Frames: Mirror Animations by Harry Smith (1957)

7 STILLS

found via Anthology Film Archives

7 Frames: Peyote Queen (1965) by Storm de Hirsch

7 still frame film scans from “Peyote Queen.”

Stan Brakage Radio Interview

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Thoughts on Richard Kerr’s Action: Study (2009)

Early Computer Generated Video Art: Sunstone (1979) by Ed Emshwiller

La Jetée (text) by Chris Marker

TREES ARE DOWN (2008)

DINCA Tv

Cowboys Were Not Nice People (1990)

Stan Brakhage Film Scans and Frame Enlargements: The Mega Thread (Source: Fred Camper)

Stan Brakhage, Coupling (1999), 16mm, 5 min, color, silent

Stan Brakhage, Purgation / The Dante Quartet (1987), 6 min, 35mm / 16mm, color, silent

Stan Brakhage, Coupling (1999), 16mm, 5 min, color, silent

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.
⇊⇊