In 1924, the Oakland Tribune and American Theatre held a contest in which people submitted their dreams. The winning dreams got made into films and the dreamers won $25. This surreal piece came from a dream submitted by Mrs. L.L. Nicholson. It more closely resembles a dream than many films since then, including Hitchcock’s Spellbound. It involves a couple on a trip and a missing baby.
Category Archives: Film
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!
Road to the Stars – 1957 Soviet Space Vision with Stunning Special Effects
Excerpt 1 – First Men in Space:
The film is in Russian but you absolutely do not need to know Russian to enjoy it! Unfortunately, I can’t find the entire film, only these three excerpts.
Pavel Klushantsev’s 1957 film, Road to the Stars, features astoundingly realistic special effects that were an inspiration and obvious blueprint for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey ten years later. The film is an extended form of science education, building upon existing 1950s technology to predict space exploration of the future. The sequences with astronauts in zero gravity are incredibly realistic. The second excerpt from the film features the construction of and life aboard a space station in earth orbit that is not only convincing but also beautiful. There are several scenes with space station dwellers using videophones that anticipate the famous Kubrick videophone scene.
Excerpt 2 – Space Station:
Excerpt 3 – Moon Landing:
Not Every Time – DSLR Film from Yemen
This is a preview for a television show from Yemen. It’s all shot on a Canon 7D digital SLR camera by Aimen Kasem who functioned as the show’s cinematographer. The show is directed by Sameer Al-Afeef. People are making very beautiful things with these DSLR cameras. I’ve been using one recently for my own films and appreciate the flexibility and quality that they offer. The post production work can be very challenging but the end results are often gorgeous. I like the looks of this dramatic show from Yemen. The preview stands on its own as a short film. With such high-quality equipment and editing tools available for a modest investment, it is becoming increasingly possible to see how people in different cultures approach and think about color. The fine manipulation of color in digital film is now available to any filmmaker and has become just as much a personal expression as it has long been for the painter.