Shot with a Nokia N8 mobile phone, Anders Weberg’s film is multi-layered trip through a night dreamscape. He seems to form landscapes of diffused glowing light.
Category Archives: Avant-Garde Film
Tokyo Night Trip – A Film by Luciana Botelho
Luciana Botelho turns cab rides in Tokyo into a gorgeous abstraction that maintains its romantic atmosphere flawlessly. What I like about these films is how the filmmaker seems able to surrender herself to a particular time and place over the extended period of time necessary for making the film. Not an easy thing to do. I’ve posted about this filmmaker’s work before.
Nightlife in a Puddle – A Film by Fabio Scacchioli
Fabio Scacchioli is an Italian filmmaker who turns ordinary shots on Super 8 film and video into magical and mystical pieces about memory and all that it does for us. I am always impressed by his work and how he finds the perfect moments to let glimmer through the haze to catch us unaware. I maintain that as we move further into the 21st century, we are developing a new cinema completely removed from the theatrical aspects of the last century’s cinema. It is filmmakers who do not try to make films that look like American features who will make the new cinema. Filmmakers making films that look like American features are looking at forms as outmoded as 19th century theatrical works were during the age of the early silents. The new cinema is as natural and immediate a form of expression as writing or painting.
I know that Scacchioli is currently working on something new and I’m looking forward to seeing it. I’ve posted about Scacchioli’s work before.
Horse Glue – A Film by Stephen Irwin
Stephen Irwin is the animator behind this horrifically beautiful and mysterious film. Its heart is located right in the deep dark forests of fairytales, but its story is a conflagration that puzzles even while it astounds. Irwin slyly weaves two films together inside an old cathode ray TV tube to create his fascinating hybrid horror.
I posted about this filmmaker’s previous film, The Black Dog’s Progress.
You can visit the filmmaker’s site at SmallTimeInc.com.
Dreams That Money Can Buy – 1947 Underground Feature Film by Hans Richter
Inspired by a Hans Richter film posted by Dangerous Minds, I went looking for more. I found this extraordinary gem, Dreams that Money Can Buy, which is a low-budget feature film produced and directed by Richter with some of his incredible friends in 1947. They shot the film in a New York loft. It’s essentially an underground experimental film about a guy who gets an apartment and worries about how to pay the rent. When he discovers that he has the power to see into his mind through the reflection of his eye, he seizes upon an idea to create a business selling dreams to people who are unhappy with their lives. So of course the film features seven surrealist dream sequences!
Brilliant! Some of the people involved with this fantastic film were Max Ernst, Paul Bowles, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, John Cage, Fernand Leger, and Man Ray.
You can watch the film in its 8 YouTube parts right here or you can go download it from Archive.org.
Part 2
Parts 3 – 8 after the jump!
Ghosts Before Breakfast – Surrealist Short by Hans Richter
Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds posted about this 1927 film by Hans Richter. Considered one of the first examples of surrealist film, it’s a daydream that uses stop-motion animation to make people and objects do totally irrational and impossible things. Richter was a part of the Dada movement in art which rebelled against ordinary life and assumptions, attempting to expose the meaninglessness behind modern life. Out of Dada came the Surrealist movement. The music for this version is from a new score by Nikolai von Sallwitz.
Thank you Mr. Metzger and Dangerous Minds!