Author Archives: Cimaxion

John Cassavetes Did a Short Film as a Favor in 1982 – The Haircut: by Tamar Simon Hoffs

by Cimaxion

Haircut

Today while Googling for John Cassavetes – something I do quite regularly just as a reminder that filmmaking is art – I found this 1982 short film by American filmmaker Tamar Simon Hoffs. At the time, she was a student at UCLA and needed an actor for her lead role. Cassavetes decided to do a favor for her because Ben Gazzara’s daughter was producing the film. So he gave the filmmaker 24 hours of his time and they made this charming and excellent short film about a recording industry guy getting a really good haircut. It’s a great film because it doesn’t try hard. It just watches a man get happy because of where he is and who he is talking to.

What a magnificent thing for an artist to do – to share his time helping a student make a film. I think that’s great.

Stephen King’s ‘Battleground’ Short Story Animated in Soviet Era Ukraine

by Cimaxion

Battleground

This is a 1986 adaptation of a Stephen King short story called ‘Battleground.’ It was produced by the Soviet Ukrainian Kievnauchfilm studio, which was primarily a documentary outfit during the Soviet era. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the studio became the National Cinematheque of Ukraine.

The story concerns a seemingly innocuous package that turns out to contain an invading force of toy soldiers. One man wages a battle for survival against what he assumes is an inferior opponent.

 

 

Silent Shadow of the Bat-Man: A Film by Andre Perkowski

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

SilentBatman

From the corrupt and nefarious cinematic mind of filmmaker Andre Perkowski comes this series of fantastic silent Batman adventures. Episodes 1 and 2 detail the caped crusader’s origin story. You know the one, but you’ve probably never seen it told this way before.

Perkowski has been featured here before for his ongoing epic adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ novel, ‘Nova Express.’

 

 

Here’s an update from the filmmaker himself! All five parts of the Bat-Man serial with a live symphony playing along!

 

 

The Seashell and the Clergyman: 1928 Surrealist Film by Germaine Dulac

by Cimaxion

Dulac2

A clergyman goes insane with lust for the wife of a general in this ravishingly beautiful silent film by one of the greatest surrealist filmmakers of all time, Germaine Dulac. She captures states of mind on film like no one I’ve ever seen. If you are looking for magic in cinema, you are going to find it here. This is a film about magic, desire, obsession, male/female power, love, faith, mysticism, and reality. Her story is hypnotic and her special effects are superb.

Here’s another of her films that I wrote about on this site.

 

Dulac

Western Italian Style: 1968 Spaghetti Western Documentary

by Cimaxion

SpaghettiWestern1

This is a 1968 television documentary about the Italian film phenomenon known as the Spaghetti Western. These bold, violent, colorful movies took a dark and sometimes comic look at the western genre. In many cases, I think these films surpassed the American westerns they emulated by playing more loosely with the violence and morality that often made for a kind of stiffness in the American films. If you aren’t familiar with the full scope of the Spaghetti Western, it’s really amazing how many full length versions are available on YouTube.

 

 

SpaghettiWestern2

Cosmic Voyage: 1936 Soviet Science Fiction Film About a Moon Landing

by Cimaxion

SovietSpaceFlight2

This is an absolutely fascinating and rather beautiful 1936 Soviet science fiction film that foretold how a future 1946 moon mission would work. It’s got incredible zero gravity effects, miniature models of a fantastic space ship on a launch ramp, and very cool technical details like filling the cockpit with fluid to buffer the cosmonauts from launch forces. Then there’s a marvelous sequence on the surface of the moon with excellent stop motion animation inter-cut with live actors. Apparently, the Soviet censors banned the film after a short but successful first run because they felt the cosmonauts were having too much fun on the moon. They were right. These characters go hopping and bounding about with so much joy it’s almost an embarrassment. Citizens of the Soviet Union were not supposed to be happy.

Don’t worry about understanding Russian. The film was shot as a silent and is more or less a completely visual experience.

It was directed by Vasili Zhuravlov, but what’s really most interesting about the production history is that Constantin Tsiolkovski, a Soviet scientist and professor, became enthusiastic about putting some of his theories on space travel into a film. He consulted with the filmmakers in an attempt to lend verisimilitude to the moon voyage. Many years later, Werner von Braun credited Tsiolkovski’s calculations as having been correct.

So here is a old Soviet film that went to great lengths to get many of its details right.



Here is an interesting article about the film.

SovietSpaceFlight3

Tarot: World Card From 1400s Italian Visconti Deck

by Cimaxion

The Italian Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck dates from around 1450. There are several incomplete decks scattered around the world in various museums and private collections. A few of the cards are permanently missing. Apparently, the Tower and Devil cards are among those that got modern replacements to complete printings of this beautiful deck.

Recently, there have been highly successful reconstructions of various Tarot decks. One of the most well-known is the result of several years of work by the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and Philippe Camoin who worked on their version of the famous Marseille Tarot deck in the 1990s. Jodorowsky's research and writing about the meanings contained in the that deck are fascinating essential reading for anyone interested in Tarot. He leans toward using the Tarot for self-knowledge and healing. His writing is inspiring. If you want to read what is probably the best book on Tarot, go get 'The Way of Tarot – The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards' by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marianne Costa.

However, the actual cards produced by Jodorowsky have a hard-edged, overly precise clarity to them. Everything is edged in black line. The colors are flat and super saturated. It's too clean and modern looking. It misses an essential ingredient in any great Tarot deck: imprecision. My mystical mind prefers some mess. A little blur always makes a symbol more powerful. Clarity brings Tarot too close to the realm of text. The images should be shrouded, revealing multiple meanings only to close and slightly irrational observation. There are other Marseille decks that avoid this fatal flaw. The Visconti deck appears to have the chaos that I require in spades!

 

The Magnificent and Mysterious Animations of Myrrha Jamil

by Cimaxion

Jamil1

The beautiful animations of Myrrha Jamil evoke dreamscapes of ever-shifting fairytale realities in which people and animals come from the earth, briefly drift, and return to nature like wisps. The drawings are done with chalk, watercolor and oil paints. She sometimes photographs her films with a vertical frame, making her little magical world seem barely glimpsed through a keyhole. There’s a mystical quality to these films. They are like messages from the fairy world.

This is work in the creative realm of filmmakers like Yuri Norstein, where the vague impressions and delicate renderings of nature and the subconscious are paramount. Myrrha Jamil is a profoundly talented and obviously brilliant filmmaker.

The Little Ones Who Grow in the Rain from Myrrha Jamil on Vimeo.

A Lullaby from Myrrha Jamil on Vimeo.

Egretta from Myrrha Jamil on Vimeo.

Chalk Boat from Myrrha Jamil on Vimeo.

Jamil2

The Charles Bukowski Tapes by Barbet Schroeder

by Cimaxion

Bukowski

During the lengthy production of the film ‘Barfly,’ director Barbet Schroeder conducted a series of short interviews with the poet Charles Bukowski. This is the complete set of those interviews and comes in at nearly four hours. Observe Bukowski and see what you think of his style. He was an incredibly sensitive soul trying to be a boxer. He was also one of those people who when they speak you just can’t wait to hear what they might say next. A real page-turner of a person.

If you want to read a fascinating book about the time of making Barfly, read Bukowski’s novel, ‘Hollywood.’ He changes the names of all the people involved, but you can easily figure out who they are. It is the best book about making a movie I have ever read in my entire life – without exception.

Singer Not the Song: A Film by Joewi Verhoeven

by Cimaxion

SingerNotTheSong

Singer Not the Song is Joewi Verhoeven’s beautifully made graduation film from Beijing, China. It tells the story of a young songwriter who finds an unexpected connection to a famous dead pop star. Liang Ming plays the lead role with quiet, building emotion. I enjoy the way this filmmaker mixes everyday observations of life in Beijing with an outlandishly melodramatic storyline.