{"id":11262,"date":"2016-08-29T20:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T01:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=11262"},"modified":"2016-08-25T13:02:47","modified_gmt":"2016-08-25T18:02:47","slug":"masterworks-of-avant-garde-film-1968-2002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/11262","title":{"rendered":"Masterworks of Avant-Garde Film: 1968-2002"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching shorts from the Flicker Alley blu-ray<\/a>, part four.<\/p>\n

Film that Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter<\/em> (1968 Owen Land)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Repetitive little piece in which people draw a character, then it comes to brief stop-motion life, then they ponder this, then it happens again with a constant, quiet burbling horror of a soundtrack. Not as much fun as I’m making it sound.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

–
\nOur Lady of the Sphere<\/em> (1969 Lawrence Jordan)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was rather dismissive of this last time<\/a> but I’m starting to find its variety of techniques and combinations of images and cutouts from old-time illustrations pretty charming. It’s certainly a funnier and more imaginative way to spend nine minutes than the last movie was. “Jordan orchestrates the film in terms of a rake’s progress” say the liners, but I couldn’t make out much of a story (though I could identify recurring characters, at least).<\/p>\n

Mouseover to hit the bear:<\/em>
\n\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mouseover to BZZZZZZT the donkey:<\/em>
\n\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

–
\nDL2<\/em> (1970 Lawrence Janiak)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Differently colored patterns fill the screen to varying degrees, from starfields to spaghetti-o’s to shower-curtain dots to bright silly-string and confetti parties, all created by organically Begotten<\/em>-ing strips of film. Chiming, percussive soundtrack. Hypnotic and strangely relaxing to watch, though next time maybe play my own music.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

–
\nLove It, Leave It<\/em> (1970 Tom Palazzolo)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Speech from a car show plays over a nudist festival. Speech honoring the military plays over clowns. Then the soundtrack goes into a hypno-loop of “love it, love it, love it, leave it” under images of contemporary America (sports and recreation, demonstrations and celebrations, people and get-togethers and riot police), the sound finally mutating into a patriotic song layered over itself like that remix I made of the Brave<\/a><\/em> trailer. The liners say he had a “sharp eye for Americana,” true. And the last page of Cinema Scope #66 points out where more Palazzolo films can be found, if I get into an Americana mood later.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

–
\nTransport<\/em> (1970 Amy Greenfield)<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of those dance shorts where the camera moves with the dancers, only the movements here are not too exciting – small group of people lifting each other across a dirty field. And the sound is completely unbearable, a series of horrible tones like the ones they play in movies after a bomb goes off to indicate tinnitus in the lead character. Also, two minutes of opening credits in a six minute movie?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

–
\nSappho & Jerry, Parts 1-3<\/em> (1977 Bruce Posner)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Early film by one of the anthology project’s many film restorationists. Three two-minute pieces where Bruce takes existing film elements, combines, mutates and split-screens the living hell out of them, adding more simultaneous frames in each ensuing chapter. Great fun.<\/p>\n

Part 1:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Part 2:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

Part 3:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

–
\nCh’an<\/em> (1983 Francis Lee)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pans, zooms and crossfades of black and white watercolors, with some short bursts of animation. Nice texture closeups of the watercolor work. I preferred Lee’s 1941<\/em> from earlier on the disc<\/a> (these are his first and last films).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

–
\nSeasons…<\/em> (2002 Solomon & Brakhage)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gorgeous variety of textures and patterns, colors and rhythms. “Intentionally silent” doesn’t fly with me, so I played the second half of the new David Grubbs album, which I would highly recommend. If I understand correctly, Brakhage did the textures and patterns, and Solomon did the lighting and coloring? Bravo to both.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I dig this frame because it looks like a dragon crashing into an aerial antenna:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching shorts from the Flicker Alley blu-ray, part four. Film that Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter (1968 Owen Land) Repetitive little piece in which people draw a character, then it comes to brief stop-motion life, then they ponder this, then it happens again with a constant, quiet burbling horror of a soundtrack. Not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[400,96,74,236,1619,424,2119,21,148],"class_list":["post-11262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1970s","tag-animation","tag-avant-garde","tag-dance","tag-larry-jordan","tag-nudity","tag-phil-solomon","tag-shorts","tag-stan-brakhage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11262"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11284,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11262\/revisions\/11284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}