avant-garde, experimental, surreal film

:DDDDDDDD that is lovely, want to see the rest now

oh cripes xposts!!!!!!!!!! um I was talking about the John Smith one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1x-9dLboDo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grbscpyrWgg&feature=related

inland empire - david lynch, if not mentioned already. yeah i realize he's the cliche go-to for surrealism, but i have never been more scared watching a movie than that one. really sucks you in.

thank you admrl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMY-3Wg3eE0&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Ty4TTAX48

More Alys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC4-op71sa4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vryg0DE7L70&feature=related

Feel like I may have already posted this but too lazy to check:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzniaKxMr2g&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJcqk3PcOlg

Ooops, this one has English subs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItEHvYi8KZI&feature=related

thanks adam.

caught a Jordan Belson retrospective last night at the Pacific Film Archive, really amazing.

Experimental fucked-up film - Mishima's Patrotism:

http://www.ubu.com/film/mishima.html

LA ppl should not be missing out on the alternative projections series going on right now (and that i really hope tours at some point). caught peter mays' 'death of a gorilla' last weekend, which is all kinds of incredible

Really LOVE Hollis Frampton.

http://www.ubu.com/film/frampton.html

Been watching a lot of experimental film this last week and he does interest me a bit more - its certainly the static rigour, but also the nhilistic streak. Nostalgia is the example, for me, here is a guy burning away what might have meant something to him, at one time.

Maya Deren also good - more surreal and dreamlike - but she is so good at making something out of dance - Meditation on Violence must be mentioned.

Chris Marker - 2084:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGkSAe0SzIg

UK cats: Dreams That Money Can Buy is on Film4 right now! Quick!

Yeah saw that years ago at the Renoir, missed last night's showing.

this is cool!

http://www.handmadecinema.com/

Went to an experimental program at the 20th anniversary of the Innis Film Society tonight. (The Society was around from '85-93; I graduated in '84. When you start attending anniversaries you predate...) There were ten films, and the only one I'd seen before was Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos. I quite liked four of them. Bruce Conner's Cosmic Ray: excellent use of "What I'd Say," kind of anticipates the Vietnam-rock 'n' roll films like Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. Brakhage's Dante Quartet: beautiful to look at, amazing to think about (how he did it). Owen Land's On the Marriage Broker Joke... (extremely long title): bizarre, very funny, impossible to describe. My favourite was Keewatin Dewdney's Maltese Cross Movement from '67. Wish I could find it online (what's the name of that site that houses all sorts of experimental films you can watch for free? I always forget its name). Unsettling.

I feel like I can take most anything in the way of aggressive sound and/or image, but 12 minutes of Paul Sharits' Touching was a real test.

Saw Asphalt Watches at Cinematheque Vancouver a week or two ago. I wasn't quite sure what to expect - kind of thought it would be cheap and with a teenagey tOtaLLy rAnDoM feel to it... but it was really very nice. Surprisingly warm in its treatment of the odd characters occupying its space. The two reviews I read said it dragged at times, and I kept thinking to myself "is this when it's going to start dragging?" and in the middle of that, the film ended.

I'd watch it again.

i think you mean

T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G

i love that movie, but yeah i always have to walk out and get some fresh air 1/2 way through.

Keewatin Dewdney's Maltese Cross Movement

that's the one w/ the beach boys "gettin hungry" on it. it's pretty great (and beyond bizarre).

bruce conner is unquestionably my favorite A-G filmmaker. my favorites of his are take the 5:10 to dreamland and valse triste,but it's all amazing.

did you mean Ubuweb clemenza?

http://www.ubu.com/film/

whole bunch of avant/etc shorts [through the years] coming up on TCM this Saturday AM (4 or 5 hours from now)

sorry, make ^that^ this Sunday AM, March 30th, from 2am onwards

thanks, Paul. Lots of good stuff and that "Free Radicals" doc I haven't seen yet

I should watch more experimental film. I watched Hans richter's every day today at the library, it was awesome. Soviet montage-style short set in London & featuring eisenstein and a stop-motion bangers & mash dancing

(xpost) That's the site, NV--thanks. I was hoping the Dewdney film would be on there, but no. (amateurist: I've never owned Smiley Smile, so I never would have guessed that was the Beach Boys.)

ubuweb is great

Can be a frustrating experience at times -- some films that you wish were in a better state.

There were ten films, and the only one I'd seen before was Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos...
I feel like I can take most anything in the way of aggressive sound and/or image, but 12 minutes of Paul Sharits' Touching was a real test.

― clemenza, Friday, March 28, 2014 9:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, I distinctly remember watching these in Innis Town Hall in my Cinema Studies classes.

I think the running joke (well, I guess it's not actually a joke) is that T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G. is the only thing that most the kids who take the intro to cinema class remember from it, just 'cause, y'know.

What's on TCM? Is it over?

I like "Free Radicals" but Maya Deren excepted, it bums me out that that particular history of avant-garde film is just a series of old straight white guys. It's nice that he includes a couple of films in their entirety though.

Ah I see it now. It's all stuff mentioned in Free Radicals. Nice to think of Ken Jacobs on tv at 3AM though!

When were you there, ed? I was '79-'84 (needed an extra year because there was a city adjacent to the campus, and that caused problems). I took the intro course with Joe Medjuck, and I don't recall experimental film being a part of it.

Going through this thread picking up recommendations, just watched the youtube of Tusalava - so good!

I did my BA there from 06-11, so missed you by a hair. They've also fortified the dept somewhat since then.

T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G screening was also a super memorable college experience for me. Audible exasperation across the room. People walking out. I was completely enthralled and hypnotized though. To this day one of my favorite pieces.

Free Radicals is really annoying. They hid well in the title that the film is mostly this father and son team of filmmakers promoting themselves. And may I ask, what is the deal with Stan Vanderbeek? I never thought he was in the same league as Breer, Conner, Brakhage et al and yet you never see anything these days without him. His estate must have a hell of an agent--they take up like 20 minutes on the guy.

yeah I didn't like that movie too much (free radicals).

such promise tho

someone will come along and do a good one, this just isn't it

Tomorrow @BFI

that's james tenney giving her the business in fuses btw

It was sadly not part of last week's programme.

However we saw Kitch's Last Meal (Carolee Schneemann, 1973-78) - Probably one of the best re-screenings I'll watch this year. In conjunction with some of her newer films which have something to them but are a lot looser.

Kitch is her cat, its dual projection (one image on top, another at bottom of the screen). It has, while not exactly a structuralist's discipline -- where the top image will have a train going to the LHS, the bottom image will have another train in the RHS -- something utterly logical to their flow. It has a great script too. It is partly diaristic, intersected with conversations with her then BF, then shots of her feeding and caring for the cat (it will die so not one for the squeamish). The diaries are her life, including struggles with men who are making and writing about other structuralist films and don't seem to like her work. The person introducing it picks up on that and makes something that doesn't bear out in the screening: that she is far more fun than the boys, that she is daring by being diaristic and looser with form. It was a v banal: men are so logical and not personal whereas Carolee is.

But when you set this aside Frampton's Nostalgia this male/female distinction collapses (would've been much better to screen this alongside Kitch's last meal). There were clearly battles and she has def experienced idiotic commentary on her films but from my perspective she is applying rigor to her images (many of which are gorgrous shots of light, sunsets and snow) that could be construed as male. When she begins to stop using that rigor, you get the later films that simply aren't going to be more than curios.

Today's viewing:

Werner Nekes - Hynningen
Teinosuke Kinugasa - A Page of Madness
Joseph Cornell - Rose Hobart (an old favourite whose name I had forgotten, took me ages to track this down again)

y'all know about this?

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/masterworks-of-american-avant-garde-experimental-film-1920-1970