avant-garde, experimental, surreal film

I was bored with Begotten

Understandably,....but it was so utterly preposterous that I can't help but love it.

Surreal-wise, I'd cite Peter Weir's early stuff like "The Last Wave" and my beloved "Picnic at Hanging Rock."

I forgot Peggy Ahwesh and Peter Hutton, who are not only great filmmakers but nice people too!

i think i burnt out on this stuff in film school. actually, i think i burnt out on all movies in film school.

Ouch...bad acid flashback of dragging my parents to see that movie in the theater. No wonder I had the shit beaten out of me during my childhood.

I only remember two things from that movie - the stupid ending with Cosby's wife dousing him in his food and the fact that the superweapon had three different colored liquids in it that Cosby switched with dishwashing liquid only to find out that it WAS filled with dishwashing liquid. (Which, of course, I found hilarious at the time. It is true - little kids are just drunken midgets.)

http://www.match-cut.de/img&snd/mbad.jpg

L' annee derriere.

It's almost, not always, true that if it's a really cutting edge film, no one will know the name of it because no one will have seen it. Non-representational films, for ex., esp. animation created by scratching and coloring, that "liberate" the filmmaker and which are the first days homework in any film school animation class. "Look, continues images don't show up as continuous images. The 24 f.p.m. standard is a compromise between flicker and the appearance of motion created by the persistence of vision." "Oh, wow."

Cinema is a rules-based artform. For the most part, these visual and narrative conventions are liberating, rather than restrictive. Visually and stylistically renegade filmmakers sometimes are useful when they develop a new technique that can be expropriated by more mainstream filmmakers.

But this is nothing new. The art for art's sake movement is relatively new, the product of the industrial revolution giving a lot more people a lot more money and leisure time. Great art has always been popular art. Raffaele and Leonardo were sought after not because they were great artists but because they were popular and each pope/prince had to keep up with the Joneses.

"Every picture tells a story, don't it."

Dead Man, while not being experimental or avant-garde, is also one of my favourite films of all time.

Would "Cabeza de Vaca" qualify?

Mark cuts to the heart of it all.

Chantal Akerman - "News From Home"
Jean-Luc Godard - "Weekend"
Abbas Kiarostami - "The Wind Will Carry Us"
Andrei Tarkovsky - "Nostalghia"

Also, the treated street car film mentioned above may be Bruce Bailey's (I think that's his name) film Castro Street, which consisted of very colorful images sliding across the screen.

bad movie: pretty much any experimental film. For example the quay brothers "institute benjementa". It's just too complicated and it's black and white. Which makes it suck. Switching scenes too slowly completely ruins the flow of the story. A nice predictable and simple story line is always better.

rowr!!

resnais mon oncle d'amérique
Luis Bunuel The Phantom of Liberty
debord la société du spectacle
Nagisa Oshima In The Realm Of The Senses
michael snow so is this

That's the person I was trying to think of in my original post to this thread. The film that features rapidly alternating perspectives from within a hallway. It has been bothering me ever since (particularly as I'd seen the film in question multiple times), and it came to me tonight.

Serene Velocity. Great film. Anyone know this one?

The Nine Lives of Thomas Katz
...where end of the world in coming to London, windows speak and the subway has it's own gods.

Watch the K Foundation Burn a Million Quid
...where the boys from KLF burn a million pounds of their own money. It really happened.

Don't Touch the White Woman!
...where the famous battle between general Custer and the Indians takes place in modern-day Paris. Marcello Mastroianni plays Custer, and Catherine Deneuve is his mistress.

i thought the K foundation thing had been officially discredited now?

What do you mean by that? I heard Drummond & Cauty have destroyed all the existing copies of the film, but nothing about it being discredited.

which surprises me. i kind of thought he had gone through with it. seemed like that kind of bloke from his writing. [naive fool that i am]

every once in a while i check amazon..i don't know how to start a request or a waiting list for a release, so all i do is hope..

now, the only maya deren- related dvd out at this point is the excellent documentary "in the mirror with maya deren" on zeitgiest films.

George Landow - On the Marriage Broker Joke...

how about "Holy Mountain" by Jodorowsky

# Hairspray (1988)
# Desperate Living (1977)
# Female Trouble (1974)
# Pink Flamingos (1972)
# Multiple Maniacs (1970)

The Color of Pomegranates -Sergei Paradjanov

WR Mysteries of the Organism -Dusan Makavejev
Sweet Movie - Dusan Makavejev

(under no circumstances read _any_ plot summary of Sweet Movie before watching the film)

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/33/makavejev.html

All Bunuel after 1960 is worth watching at least once, also don't miss El

found this site looking for a good link for Zulawski's film Possession. have seen about 75% of these, which bodes well for the ones I haven't.

i thought this was the thread where one of the noize dudes threw a hissy fit because they thought i criticized a brakhage film, but i guess not

(sorry)

An Evening w/ Ernie Gehr at NYC MoMA tonight (there were still tix 2 hrs ago).

http://moma.org/calendar/films.php?id=6243

Recent obits for Curtis Harrington refer to a series of early underground movies, including one, 'Wormwood Star', featuring the fabulous Marjorie Cameron from 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome'.

Anyone seen any of this?

By next year, every expensive uptown arts venue that screens a-g film will be devoted entirely to Ernie Gehr.

'Pleasure Dome' is fucking awesome! There's a collection of Kenneth Anger's films (vol. 1, more forthcoming I hope) on DVD now from Fantomas, I got it through Netflix. I liked all five of them on the DVD. Marjorie Cameron was the wife of Jack Parsons, crazy fucking world.

Chappaqua, anyone?

Anger v.2 is out.

Gehr was a funny little guy, talking about his friendship w/ Michael Snow: "Then he moved to Canada. And there was no email, it was the '60s! People were living in caves!"

Serene Velocity is hypnotic, for those who aren't susceptible to seizures... Side/Walk/Shuttle might be in my top 3 San Francisco films now.

pleasure dome is def. my favorite anger

Didn't Jack Parsons claim at one point that Marjorie Cameron wasn't actually human, that she was the magic(k)al result of a ritual that he and L Ron Hubbard had been working?

So, anyone want to talk about structural film? I know virtually nothing about it, but nevertheless assigned myself the task of writing about it.

On that note, I love how This video is a response to Global Swine Flu Cases Close To Pandemic Level

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY7B2-Wqj6g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-v4kZPzZzY&feature=related

I'm kind of amazed at what's on Youtube sometimes. Nothing beats seeing an actual PRINT of the Lipsett though!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_avIZO8DoOs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnakPuaDELk&playnext_from=TL&videos=LFTNLVlm3Y0&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_fresh%2Bdiv-1r-2-HM

fucking love arthur lipsett, even though he's been a big influence on george lucas / coppolla etc it is astounding to me that I made it to 2009 before hearing about him. bruce conner is cool and everything but where the hell were the prints of lipsett's films when I was in film studies 101?

I have a copy of this and I even listen to it: http://www.discogs.com/Arthur-Lipsett-Arthur-Lipsett-Soundtracks/release/792458

http://www.diagonalthoughts.com/?p=64

I have the Lipsett soundtracks too!

we're pretty much legion

Some loops for y'all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzMvQtVEXok&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pe8O5h9EEs&feature=related

These look like shit, sorry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_9D_JB3TBA&feature=fvw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2LuqpirHl0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDoH_KGTR7A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=retMJjM3iBY&feature=related

Woah love the split frame in that last one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2OBNPN7818&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTarJ0Op7W8&feature=related

Oh man, I love that Martin Arnold, I haven't been able to see it since we watched a 16mm print in my sophomore year of college.

this has been boggling me lately:

http://thesoundofeye.blogspot.com/

ha I see they took down the Ira Cohen film that was reissued by Arthur...

i'm pleased da intawebs has somewhat put pay to the "harder core than thou" aspect of fanboyism that has historically plagued the appreciation of "such" film. i think there's much experimental which doesn't evoke any feeling of "magic" - fair enough - the "real", scabrous, harsh & unforgiving in a situationist / docu style has it's place. but i will say in defence of the magical to check at your leisure fellini's "satyricon" & "casanova" & power rangers lost galaxy "return of the magna defender" i do not joke here.
can you help me tho, i wonder? i'm looking for an old film i thought was either man ray or duchamp (might not be): something like " poeme cinematique " or similar title - very art deco surrealist i think perhaps concentrating on NY or Paris architecture, shadows, the play of light on water etc any ideas? vielen dank !

Ballet Mecanique?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SgsqmQJAq0

ah super, thank you, but not the film in question. i think the one i'm seeking (based on a hugely fuzzy ancient memory) is a little (just a little) more recent. sadly i can't give you much more than that. sorta swimming cap flapper art deco abstract tourist board film dappled shadows scintillations of water reflections. no worries if you're drawing a blank, so am i!
o:
honorable mention for masaki kobayashi's "kwaidan" ( super cinematic ghost stories in glorious technicolor w/ super toru takemitsu score ), nobuhiko obayashi's "hausu"/ "house" super cheesy scoooby doo style haunted house 70's teen-schmaltz-horror, whatever folks directed "funky forest" gentle contemporary pop-surrealist sketch-show film,
most dario argento, most cronenburg, the m.barney canon, and season 2 & 3 lexx haha!

Hello bob snoom, yr descrip kinda sounds like a mash-up of Vigo's Apropos de Nice and Taris, tho' i don't suppose its either.

i think you might also like Dreams That Money Can Buy by Hans Richter

"dreams..." i know, it's a smasher ! - will def check out the others thank you.
maya deren gave me nightmares.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upHAWrEj1qY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjnHUJ455Ss&feature=related

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMDez_kGL2Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-cvJq3m7pw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yALxXKDjI1k

: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

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

:(

Straub / Huillet retrospective at UC Berkeley, starts on Jan 26, until May 2017

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/program/not-reconciled-cinema-straub-huillet

coming to America

https://thefilmstage.com/news/grasshopper-film-to-release-catalogue-of-legendary-filmmaking-duo-jean-marie-straub-and-daniele-huillet/

http://grasshopperfilm.com/film/straub-huillet-collection/

Yvonne Rainer recommendations?

https://www.filmlinc.org/series/talking-pictures-the-cinema-of-yvonne-rainer/#films

Journey from Berlin is all I've seen - can't remember much about it, except thinking it was good.

Would so see Madame X. Ulrike Ottinger is really good.

Have fun!

obit roundup for Paul Clipson

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5371-the-daily-paul-clipson-1965-2018

RIP Jonas Mekas

http://gothamist.com/2019/01/23/jonas_mekas_avant-garde_film_auteur.php

re: the straub/huillet discussion upthread, full retro happening in london over the next three months: https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21471962&

RIP Barbara Hammer

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6250-barbara-hammer-s-legacy

word seems to be spreading that straub has passed

:-(

Straub and Godard In the same year, damm. And Rest in Provocation.

RIP. I saw From the Cloud the the Resistance, Antigone and Machorka-Muff just this year. All amazing, and the first is so singular and strange.

Here's a lovely curated playlist of shorts:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5xOztE613KMOvfW_L5zaa6j3cdLUwO4c

I have more vivid memories of reading Richard Roud's Straub book than the films themselves, intriguing though they were.
I should get around to watching Sicilia!, which James Quant of TIFF was always talking up.

couple of days left to catch two, imo, unmissable online retrospectives of female experiemntal filmmakers:

ellie epp on ultra dogme: https://ultradogme.com/2023/08/18/ellie-epp/

jun kurosawa on equinox: https://equinox.film

👍

Don't know, should I bother watching this?

https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/film_programmes/2025/histoire-s-du-cinema/central-bazaar

Look fun?

Yes, all Dwoskin is essential

Although Central Bazaar is actually one of his easier to see films (the BFI put out a DVD of it).

A certain former ILXor co-edited a book about Dwoskin a couple of years ago btw.

Great, now won't actually be able to see this tonight but I will hunt some of his work down.

(Just reading about him and yes can see who that ilxor might be :-))