Spanish filmmaker Diego Barrera uses Christian symbolism and New Age crystals to mount a mystical vision trip the takes inspiration from the film works of Alejandro Jodorowski. I believe it is a music video for a group called ‘Mater Susperia Vision.’
Category Archives: Film
Warhol and Maciunas: A Film by Jonas Mekas
This is a film by Jonas Mekas that features Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and George Maciunas who founded the New York art movement known as Fluxus. The film shows a Whitney Museum art opening in 1971 and an artists’ party in New York. Home movies become an artform in Mekas’ hands.
Those Dreams That On the Silent Night Intrude; The Secret Cinema of Jerzy Treblinka: A Film by Luca Gennari
This is a Super 8 film made on a single cartridge without post-production effects by Italian filmmaker Luca Gennari for the Straight Eight Festival at Cannes 2010. There’s a great reference to the brilliant Super 8 filmmaker Derek Jarman buried in here. This film glories in the history of abstract, surreal and neorealist cinema. But it fuses those things with a documentary realism. It ties the artistic workings and ramblings of a mysterious filmmaker to the darkness, horror and murder of the Twentieth Century. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again… Italy is involved in a cinema movement that is just as profound as the movements there in the 1940s, 50s, and sixties. The filmmakers in Italy who are today using the Web for their expression are the equals of Fellini and Rossellini.
Winning Short Films From Cannes à la Flip
Cannes à la Flip is a contest held at the Cannes Film Festival for short films made with Flip cameras.
The 2011 first place winner is ‘Kiteling’, by Romanian filmmaker Eva Pervolovici.
The second place winner is ‘One Night Avec La Mer’ by Colin L. Racicot:
The third place winner is ‘Youth’ by Ayse Altinok:
Doll Clothes: A Short Film by Cindy Sherman
Artist, photographer, filmmaker Cindy Sherman made this short stop-motion film, Doll Clothes, in 1975. I only just realized during my most recent viewing that she was actually continuing the conversation with Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.’
There’s a glitch in the YouTube video, so you’ll need to drag the slider a bit to get the movie started.
Duchamp’s ‘Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2’ (1912):
I found this via the Echo Park Film Center.
Luna Park: A Film by Luciana Botelho
Paris filmmaker Luciana Botelho travels and films her love of light and color. In this one, filmed in Lausanne, Switzerland, she turns carnival rides into a celebration of exploding light and pattern that seem to exist in their own realm apart from reality. Her interests seem to lie in the unnoticed beauty of everyday environments. Her camera observes with that sly calm that I admire in any artist. She steals moments of beauty from the unaware because they do not own the moments – she does.
The Resurrection Movie: A Film Trailer by Michel Montecrossa
MATURE CONTENT AND NUDITY:
This is Michel Montecrossa’s peace and climate change musical. It tells a great passion story which is the love-tale of cyberrocker-astronaut Starlight and his mate Earthpower and how they change hellish mega city planet through their music into a free world. It’s full of rock & roll, motorcycles, leather jackets, keyboards, cowboy hats, sex drawings, mirror sunglasses, hip rocker women, New Age and science fiction. I don’t know who these people are, but they sure do look fun and they have some kind of wild movie going on here. It features the poetry of Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound and William Wordsworth! My general take on it is that the film is a cry for individual expression and freedom in a time of unending war and conflict managed by the forces of homogenous corporate control. Director Michel Montecrossa is described as a ‘prolific songwriter, orchestral composer, painter, writer, moviemaker, futurist architect and cyberartist.’ Wild people like this should make more films.
Elegìa: A Film by Fred. L’Epee and Dimitra Pouliopoulou
Filmmakers Fred L’Epee and Dimitra Pouliopoulou deal with the emotions of video. Their short films are visual poems in the most real sense. I like the way they flirt with the techniques of celluloid while remaining firmly anchored in video. The two things, rather than cancelling each other, work together to offer a filmmaker more tools for opening eyes and insisting that people fully observe. This kind of film dances between reality and abstraction. The ships are placed so that they traverse a line between light and dark, high and low, space and time.
Propaganda Mussolini: A Film by Massimo Balloi
Italian filmmaker Massimo Balloi has made an abstract film that attempts to explain the descent of Italy into modern fascism. The rapid turn of Western democracies toward a virulent corporate fascism does in fact resemble the ideas put forth by Mussolini in the 1930s and 40s. But his effort was to mimic the efficiencies of the corporation in government. The new effort currently underway is to replace government control with corporate control. The danger is real and it is extreme. Even in the United States we see a Supreme Court allying itself with corporations. In Italy, you have a very basic corporate buffoon running the country as if it were a criminal enterprise. In the U.S. you have completely false liberals maneuvering a corporate front man into the Presidency so that every decision is made with a seemingly logical inclination toward the interests of the large corporations. We are now fighting entire wars based solely on decisions by corporations.
The twenty first century will not be the century of war against terrorists. It will be a century of war against corporations. They will gain an upper hand initially, but this will be short-lived. I say this because once you get inside these corporate structures you can observe how shockingly weak they are. BP is your perfect example. A single broken valve can weaken the entire stack of cards. These corporate entities can only flourish while people are asleep.
Broken English: A Film by Derek Jarman Featuring Marianne Faithfull
MATURE CONTENT:
This might be the most beautiful film you will see all year. It is the full version of ‘Broken English,’ starring Marianne Faithfull. It was made by Derek Jarman. It incorporates three of Faithfull’s songs. Jarman learned a great deal from American avant-garde filmmaker, Kenneth Anger. Interestingly, Marianne Faithfull also starred in an Anger film called ‘Lucifer Rising.’ The montage and superimposition going on in this film is simply stunning. It’s full of dark pagan ritual, sex, violence, romance, adoration, and mystery. I think Jarman is one of the very few filmmakers who understood what Anger was doing in his work and tried to carry on from there.
Documentary On Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Unmade Dune Film
Twitch Film has posted a preview of a documentary that is currently in production on the unmade 1974 Alejandro Jodorowsky version of Dune. It is nice to see a man talk about making something the way Jodorowsky does in this short clip. When I see that kind of open enthusiasm I want to be in the same room. Quite frankly, I would much rather have the Jodorowsky film of Dune than the piece of vapid nonsense that was actually made by David Lynch. The general rule is if you see a movie with Sting in it… run for the exits. Documentaries are wonderful, but Jodorowsky really should make his version of the book now.
In the Shadow: A Short Film Noir by Fabrice Mathieu
Written and directed by Fabrice Mathieu, ‘In the Shadow’ is a film noir about the separate lives of shadows. It is made entirely from existing film noir shadow shots. What happens when a person’s shadow kills its ‘wearer’ and lives its own life? I love all of this film noir stuff with black and white shadows and contrast. The sense of graphic dread is missing from mainstream films today. This short film is apparently a prequel for a feature length project.
Runts: A Short Film by Lori Felker
Ahhh… sibling rivalry in a warped and earthy garden of delights! Mike Everleth at Badlit found this grisly but charming tale of two doll-babies who joyfully tear each other to bits. The film by Lori Felker features dark and murky photography that enhances this tale of plastic dismemberment.
Artificial: A Short Science Fiction Film by Mónia Camacho
Mónia Camacho of Portugal made this short science fiction piece about a fragmentary broadcast from an alien artificial intelligence. There’s some talent here. The film is made in the simplest possible fashion but conveys some interesting emotions and ideas. I think the film should be expanded into something quite a bit longer. The odd, almost out of place expressions of the character make me curious. I want the AI to ramble on for a while. That final landscape shot is fantastic. You could almost take this short film and drop it right into a Tarkovsky film like Solaris. It would fit.
Solaris: 1972 Science Fiction Classic by Andrei Tarkovsky
Have you ever watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s brilliant 1972 Russian science fiction film, Solaris? Well, you should. It’s long and it moves at its own leisure, but you’ll be richly rewarded with an unforgettable cinematic experience. When I was a kid I was a huge fan of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. So when I went to see this film I was very cranky about it because it just didn’t have the same look as 2001. But Tarkovsky was not interested in spaceships or realistic zero gravity. He was looking for the soul. Solaris is a deeply emotional film that points the way toward a science fiction that does not rely on science or technology for its visuals. If you have seen the recent version of Solaris by Steven Soderbergh, you really should consider watching this one. Tarkovsky was not afraid to dismantle the normal narrative drive and pacing of the majority of Hollywood films. He allowed time to play itself out in his films. No scene was ever cut to spare an audience’s attention span. Soderbergh, for all his efforts to look independent, is completely at the mercy of the prevailing winds of Hollywood and makes every film to suit the intellectual capacities of a thirteen year old audience. This is usually apparent in the editing, not the writing. Hollywood filmmakers edit films as if they are flashcards for the slow learners. You can’t call yourself an independent filmmaker if you are really just a prostitute. Tarkovsky was, in spite of the constant oversight by the authoritarian Soviet government, a true unbending independent.
The film is an adaptation of the novel by the great Polish science fiction writer, Stanislaw Lem.
It has been made available by Mosfilm for free viewing on their new YouTube channel.
Part 1:
Part 2: