avant-garde, experimental, surreal film

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

Yeah, saw that review when it was posted. Probably a library checkout for me.

Saw this tonight:

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

I mentioned earlier in this thread how trying it was for me to sit through T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G last year. I don't know that it would be any easier today, but the documentary did provide enough context that there are some others I'd like to try: Razor Blades, S:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTIONED, 3rd Degree, and (especially) Epileptic Seizure Comparison. A lot of the explanations and analysis here (from Annette Michelson, Bruce Elder, etc.) was very dense; I get stupider by the day, so a lot of that was just out of reach for me. The film was lighter on biography (the filmmaker was there and explained that decision), but Sharits' last year or two and death was grim. One thing I realized: long before I had any idea who Sharits was, I remember seeing this cover of Film Culture, and the image stayed in my mind (maybe it was reproduced in a book somewhere).

https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.collageplatform.com.prod/image_cache/700x525_fit/53da626f69921a805e010656/ce837cf36ae4bd1947c4aacd1498c341.jpeg

ok, who's seen any Dore O?

http://www.spectacletheater.com/dore-o/

http://www.bkmag.com/2016/02/08/windows-of-the-soul-the-mysterious-experimental-films-of-german-artist-dore-o-at-the-spectacle/

Those look pretty sick.

"Alaska" and "Kaldalon" are both on youtube. 480p but better than nothing.

ok

NYC revival slate + new stuff is maddening, and that theater has about 35 seats

Try living in a Scottish village. You never see anything.

well ive never seen a Scottish village, might be nice.

It is, in it's way. (actually I've just been made homeless, so probably won't post for the next year or so.) Anyway, isn't the real avant garde making your own films, which no-one wants to watch?

:( :(

Ha, well I'm taking my camera with me, so maybe I can make some Ken Loach-esque poverty porn.

anyone know Ed Atkins' work?

http://www.bam.org/film/2016/ed-atkins

how about Basma Alsharif?

http://www.bam.org/film/2016/basma-alsharif

i guess i should see some Bruce Baillie in NYC this weekend

http://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/art-of-the-real/

i did.

Andrew Noren?

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/1629?locale=en

soliciting Straub / Huillet recomms for May (only seen Not Reconciled)

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/1641?locale=en

I bought Anti-Clock on a whim the other day. It's supposed to be pretty abstract and hard to follow- a sort of Finnegan's Wake of British cinema. Anyone seen it?

Haven't managed to get a copy yet but have seen clips and love what I've seen so far. I am an ardent Arden stan, though (I love both Separation and the Other Side of the Underneath, though the latter is intensely harrowing). There's an element of 60s/70s feminist performance theatre to her work that I think some people struggle with, as well as the abstraction.

Afraid I can't help with Morbs' request, but would like to hear a report back.

You've got Anti-Clock! I bought it you in the last few months..

V jealous of that Straub/Huillet retrospective - only know Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, thanks to this Region 2 DVD set (guess I should get around to watching the other two films there)

http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/view-film-detail.html/?viewListing=Mjc=

xxp I tried watching it (alone) but I wasn't really watching it properly. Not much happens but a lot happens if you know what I mean. It's easy for my attention to wander and then miss out on a lot of detail. I'll give it another go next time I've nothing to do. The DVD has loads of extras and additional short films.

Going to see this on Sunday, a former ILXOR tell me that a Dwoskin retrospective DVD set is in the works

http://luxscotland.org.uk/events/screening-lux-scotland-presents-pain-is-by-stephen-dwoskin/

Ward - you've got to watch Sicilia! ASAP, its the best.

Crossing the Threshold: Experimental films and live performances from Malcolm Le Grice

soliciting Straub / Huillet recomms for May (only seen Not Reconciled)

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/1641?locale=en

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 26 April 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You've got to see Too Early/Too Late

So much good shit - I'd get to the Holderlin and Pavese adaptations and def Sicilia! (which at nearly 70 mins is not a short)

Hate how these are relegated to galleries - what's the screen at MoMa like?

In the meantime the BFI is treating to a Spielberg season #bumsOnSeats policy y'all!

Thanks xyzzzz, will get right on it

The MoMA screens are proper theaters; i haven't checked how many are in theater #1, the biggest room and screen

You've got Anti-Clock! I bought it you in the last few months..

― lilcraigyboi (Craigo Boingo), Wednesday, April 27, 2016 10:16 AM (4 hours ago)

Doh, you know what, I had *completely* forgotten this and was gonna ask to borrow your copy. FFS, me.

Werner Nekes - Hynningen

Music by Anthony More of Slapp Happy (along with a lot of other films by Werner Neukes).

Hoberman's piece on Straub-Huillet in the Times today is not going to set off a MoMA stampede -- he quoted Straub saying their movies were made to be walked out of, and finished by asking the curator if he was feeding the audience "spinach."

TBF, it's hard to think of a 'campaign' that would result in lines around the block for a complete Straub-Huillet retro, if gross deception is not involved. In a way, emphasising the alienated difficulty of these films makes them seem more alluring, more of a challenge to be taken on.

Thanks to xyzzzz, I watched Scilia! - not on a big screen, unfortunately (it's worth saying that it's a very beautiful film in places, cinematography by frequent Rivette collaborator William Lubtchansky, though the framing/editing is totally Straub-Huillet's own - incredible repetition of unmotivated slow pans over empty rural landscapes, other shots that carry on well past their 'end'). In places, it reminded me of Costa's Horse Money, or seemed like it could be one source for Costa's style, a way of presenting historical narrative, giving voice to the unvoiced etc.

Hilarious quote from Straub.

Glad you liked Sicilia! Ward - source novel is very much worth reading btw (I think its a great visual intro to those landscapes in mid-cent Italian Lit of Pavese, Vittorini, Moravia, Morante)

And Costa worked with Straubs. Some of Haneke's work is very much S/H (Haneke stole the sequence in Egypt in Too Early/Too Late for the end of Hidden)

some of huillet/straub's films are quite amazing, so it's impossible to dismiss them, but i also find it kind of impossible not to find them (and some of their more ardent supporters like tag gallagher) a bit silly in their conviction that somehow three-hour films of nonactors declaiming communists texts fromthe 1930s while standing in a calabrian forest are going to aid the Revolution.

even in their worst films, there is something undeniably gripping about the way they record sound, the way they frame people and landscape, their cutting rhythms, etc. it's just that the political conceits behind their "program" seem really misguided to me.

actually, one of the better critiques of their recent (by which i mean last 20 years) work is actually in a trotskyite publication of all places. scroll down to about halfway through: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/05/baf3-m20.html

i actually kind of like pedro costa's first two features but otherwise i have to say he seems like something of a charlatan to me. if anything he has all of the huillets' self-seriousness and not enough of their filmmaking skill.

here's another attack on straub and costa from the World Socialist Website critic David Walsh, who despite having some serious blinkers on a lot of time, is not at all a bad critic: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/25/fic3-m25.html

re: Costa being a charlatan. You may or may not like what he is doing but I think his work in the inner cities is deeply felt, committed and comes from a genuine place.

From a scan those pieces don't really give me much to re-think. Looking at the events in mid-70s Portugal from the POV of Cape Verdians is a great way of looking at those events - and carry even more of a charge today, given what is happening in Europe.

re: Straubs. I actually don't see the fuss. From the half-dozen I've seen they seem very watchable and I can only imagine there being other reasons for the difficulty in presenting their work at the BFI. I've seen old arthouse 'classics' in old prints with four fucking people over the years. Seriously, what's the hold up?

I've been hot and cold on Costa, but i generally found Horse Money hypnotic on first viewing. I am gonna steer clear of the more "declamatory"/lengthy S-H films tho. That leaves enough for me to dip my toe.

S-H roundup, including link to Hoberman

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-jean-marie-straub-and-daniele-huillet

and linking this Pinkerton piece on S-H because I walked out on History Lessons at the two-thirds mark last week, feeling Straub wouldn't mind. The Bach film was fine, though.

http://frieze.com/article/we-make-our-films-so-audiences-can-walk-out-them

Only the strong survive Straub-Huillet – and I wouldn’t have shirked the test for all the world.

#maMan

Although I was just talking abt my struggles with Brecht's prose on ILB.

soliciting Straub / Huillet recomms for May (only seen Not Reconciled)

Read this as Straub / Huillet romcoms, which would be great.

Although, if anyone can recommend a good place to start with them, that would also be great.

ed.b, if you still have access to a DVD machine capable of playing Region 2 DVDs, I would recommend this two disc set from New Wave films, which contains Straub-Huillet's biggest hit - Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach - and Sicilia!, which xyzzzz astutely recommended above.

Aren't all their films romances?

http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/view-film-detail.html/?viewListing=Mjc=

RIP Peter Hutton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM4V7lAy74M

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/movies/peter-hutton-filmmaker-with-austerely-romantic-worldview-dies-at-71.html

:(