Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films

[sevenarts]

Savant's review of the Kino Avant Garde Vol.2 set.
Good thing: "All are in B&W, and all are in surprisingly good condition." Bad thing: that Marotta guy is involved again on some of those silent films.... How bad does it get this time?

This may be a bit late, but the Kino set is excellent. The Marotta soundtracks, unsurprisingly, suck ass, but there seem to be fewer new soundtracks than on the previous set, and it's more user-friendly in terms of turning them off. Kino must've seen all the complaints from last time around, so this time before each film which has a new soundtrack, an option screen comes up to the effect that the film originally screened silent, and the soundtrack is optional on it. A minor thing, but at least that way you don't have to keep muting and un-muting your tv to watch the films. On the whole, though there aren't quite as many great films as on the last set, there's still plenty of interesting work here.

[zedz]

I've been enjoying the first Kenneth Anger dvd collection from Fantoma, and eagerly awaiting the release of the second set, but am slightly confused about the soundtracks for these early films. I can't figure much out from Anger's own commentary, and the booklet doesn't delve into much details. Clearly, these soundtracks were added later - I think the Capris' "There's a Moon Out Tonight" wasn't released until nearly a decade after Rabbit's Moon was first filmed, and Jonathan Halper's music for Puce Moment is late 1960s rather than late 1940s. When were these songs added? What was originally in their place, if anything? And when did Anger decide on the final soundtracks?

My understanding is that Anger has worked and reworked a lot of his films over the years (I think I've seen at least three of them in significantly different versions at different times), not least with the soundtracks. As I recall, some of the earlier films (Puce Moment and Rabbit's Moon) were not 'completed' for general circulation until some years after shooting (hence the anachronistic soundtracks). If they were shown privately earlier on, it could well have been silent or with live accompaniment.

I wouldn't trust anything Ken himself has to say about it, but maybe somebody can provide a link to better information about the different versions of his films.

[Tommaso]

Sevenarts, I fully agree with what you say about the second Avant Garde set. Little of it is as important as those films on the first volume (and how could it be otherwise?), but it still is an exciting set for the most part. I have mixed feelings about the American films (especially Makropoulos and Peterson didn't do anything for me), but "House of Cards" is a true marvel, and it was highly interesting to see the beginnings of Brakhage. An amazing sense of space already in his very first film, "Interim", which in addition is genuinely touching. The films on disc two are generally more interesting for me, with "Rebus-Film" being a light-hearted and charming curiosity, while "Usher" and the Kirsanoff film are truly major works (even though I find "Arriere Saison" not quite as marvellous as the two Kirsanoffs on the first volume). Most interesting of all is Isou's "Venom and Eternity", a film that everybody seems to either love or hate, but even if it gets on your nerve, it is hard not to be entranced by it. Schreck has just written an eulogy about it over in its dedicated thread, with which I have to agree, even if one can have a lot of reservations about the film.

The Marotta soundtracks, unsurprisingly, suck ass, but there seem to be fewer new soundtracks than on the previous set, and it's more user-friendly in terms of turning them off. Kino must've seen all the complaints from last time around.

I think so too, but why then didn't they simply drop that Marotta guy in the first place? Again, I couldn't stand these abominations longer than two minutes. Susan Hershe's music for Brakhage's "Unglassed Windows" is quite good, though.

[Gosvig]

I have just seen the two Derek Jarman super8 programme dvds from Rarovideo, which I enjoyed a lot! I picked up the films at the library and have had them for some days. After viewing and reviewing them I have decided to buy them, however I have one concern; the films seems to be from a VHS-source - and I am not thinking of the very grainy images that is so typically super 8 - when watching for example the opening titles of "In the Shadow of the Sun" this seems evident, stripes appears in the image that resembles VHS-flicker. Can anyone confirm this and does any of you know of alternative/better releases of these films?

[Gregory]

DVD Beaver review of the excellent Magical Films of Joseph Cornell release from the Voyager Foundation.

[HerrSchreck]

Is that the Voyager foundation connected to early LD CC's?

The review states

This is the only way to get Cornell's films for home viewing

which is slightly off, since a chunk of these are available in Unseen Cinema/AG from Anthology-Image.

[Gregory]

I thought it was the same Voyager Foundation but on their web site they say the Cornell releases constitute "its first project."
About the error in the review: DVD Beaver did review the Unseen Cinema set but it wasn't Gary, so he's probably unaware of the Cornell content in it. If someone shoots off a correction to him I'm sure he'd amend the review.

[Zazou dans le Metro]

Is that the Voyager foundation connected to early LD CC's?

The review states

This is the only way to get Cornell's films for home viewing

which is slightly off, since a chunk of these are available in Unseen Cinema/AG from Anthology-Image.

Also one of the discs (The magical worlds of..) is available as a dvd rom in the book on Cornell called Shadowplay/ Eterniday and includes 9 of the films.

[Gregory]

The review I linked to is of the Magical Worlds set, or at least the DVD part of it. Voyager released the DVD-ROM with the book you mentioned and as part of this standalone set.

[Tommaso]

This looks magical indeed. I just had a quick look at the Foundation's website, and it seems that there's no reasonable way to order this from outside the US. They want people to send them a 'certified check', something which if it still exists at all in the EU, would be hugely inconvenient and would probably incur some extra costs for the buyer, too. So my question is: is there any other art institution/seller who sell this set and where you can pay by credit card or paypal?

[Zazou dans le Metro]

Well I have both sets and they seem to be all incorporated in the dvd rom with the book as mentioned above. So unless someone can see a difference (I can't) maybe the book's the way to go.

[Gregory]

When I first checked Shadowplay Eterniday out from the library when it was first published, it only had the DVD-ROM inside, not the DVD. If I understand what Zazou is saying correctly, this DVD-ROM includes the films. (I remembered the DVD-ROM having interactive reproductions of his work but not the films). In any case, I'm glad to have the films on DVD, not on a DVD-ROM.
In any case, I'm still confused about what comes with the book because I have found some reviews of the book that say it comes with just a DVD-ROM, and some library catalog listings that claim the book comes with both the DVD-ROM and the actual DVD.
I guess it doesn't matter much to me -- the book is quite nice but I'm OK owning just The Magical Worlds of Joseph Cornell on its own.

[denti alligator]

I too have the book with DVD ROM. Films are there, but quality isn't all that great. Would love to get the DVD on its own. Maybe I'll order a few of them to make it possible for Tomasso and others overseas to get their hands on it.

[Gregory]

Yes, it's on Treasures From American Films Archives (reason #3,728 to own that set). On a trivia note, Alpha has also released the source film, East of Borneo!

[MichaelB]

I'm glad to see that avant-garde and experimental films made a strong showing on the Non-Criterion DVD of the Year poll, with Fantoma's Kenneth Anger sets and the BFI's Jan Å vankmajer: The Complete Short Films coming in at numbers 1 and 3 respectively - and the Å vankmajer going on to win Best Non-Criterion DVD of 2007.

[HerrSchreck]

I can take that up-- Carousel Animal Opera like the Lullaby of Broadway routine from Goldiggers of 35 is one of those perfectly compacted pieces of standalone cinema. CAO abused me when I first saw it, and-- people talk about doing this a lot but I almost never do, because I rarely get anything from Back2Back viewings-- I watched it three more times in a row to make sure that the tears of laughter dripping off me were not just some fluke. His ideas about cutting and rhythm are about the most unique PERIOD, and in terms of Comment About His World I could go on and on-- but would never do justice to that wild little saint.

There's nothing more saintly and righteous and spot-on for a genius to do than live in the shadows btw. It proves his seriousnous about his art. Anyone who thinks Cornell was just goofing has got it assbackwards.

[bearcuborg]

I own Unseen Cinema and Treasures, did I wast my money picking up this 2-disc set? I'm wondering if I shouldn't have just gotten the book mentioned instead.

Also picked up the Martin Arnold disc today, and the conversion was $78!!! I guess there's nothing I can do at this point though...

[vogler]

The Cornell 2 disc set is fantastic and contains the ultimate dvd collection of Cornell's films available. There seems to be a bit of confusion here. As far as I know the book only contains the DVD-ROM which only contains the films as low quality quicktime files to be watched on your computer. If it's the films you're after then you need The Magical Films of Joseph Cornell DVD that's available in the 2 disc set reviewed at DVD Beaver.

Aren't the Cornell films included on the Unseen Cinema and Treasures box sets mostly different ones to those included on the The Magical Films of Joseph Cornell DVD?

[Zazou dans le Metro]

The Cornell 2 disc set is fantastic and contains the ultimate dvd collection of Cornell's films available. There seems to be a bit of confusion here. As far as I know the book only contains the DVD-ROM which only contains the films as low quality quicktime files to be watched on your computer. If it's the films you're after then you need The Magical Films of Joseph Cornell DVD that's available in the 2 disc set reviewed at DVD Beaver.

Aren't the Cornell films included on the Unseen Cinema and Treasures box sets mostly different ones to those included on the The Magical Films of Joseph Cornell DVD?

Yes sorry i should have made it clearer. It might be me at the heart of the confusion. I was referring to the content rather than the quality. You're perfectly correct that they are Q-time on the DVD rom. I just was picking up on the fact that there was another solution to seeing the 9 films on the dvd if that was unavailable to them.
Consider my mouth washed out and my wrist slapped.

[HerrSchreck]

Aren't the Cornell films included on the Unseen Cinema and Treasures box sets mostly different ones to those included on the The Magical Films of Joseph Cornell DVD?

Not really, as there arent that many so there's bound to be some overlap due to the access granted by his estate to these mutliple projects on dvd. In the Voyager set is
Nymphlight, Angel, Jack's Dream, Centuries of June, Cotillion and The Midnight Party, The Aviary, Bookstalls, Rose Hobart and A Legend for Fountains

And of those, just off the top of my head, Rose Hobart, Cotillion, the Midnight Party, Jacks Dream are on the Anthology and Treasures discs. Not to mention the crucial Carousel - Animal Opera which is probably his greatest work in my opinion that is on Unseen Cinema, making that a required set for that single reason alone. Not to mention-- as greg stated for the Treasures set-- UC is one of the single greatest releases in the whole history of the home video medium. It is just incredibly rich, filled with the most obscure masterpieces you--guaranteed-- have never seen in your life.

By now I've grabbed the Busby Berkeley box from WB... and I really should have put BB's Lullaby of Broadway segment in my "All Time List" of overall film favorites. It is simply one of the greatest masterpieces in any time in any art form (I was introduced to it-- the film not the song itself which I've always known- believe it or not thru the UC set, though with some dubious attribution of "classist nightmares" on exposition in the piece which I felt was opure hogwash). As a marriage of film, dance, music, and pure cinema it is just unmatched. It could not have been more perfectly realized. There are times I watch it and am moved nearly to tears thru sheer astonishment of the force of the piece, and the facts of life determining that all that pulsating, vivid power and life have been extinguished by the passing of time and are all mere tombstones on cemetaries... illustrating the greatness of art that a man-- all of them, Warrne & Dubin, Winni and her sublime face and deeply felt voice, the savagery of the dancers, the throb of the city of the era being celebrated-- can reach from beyond the grave and sock you one so powerfully.

I say most fully realized because for the first time Berkeleys talent is matched in all the other participants (not to downplay the power of his other sequences, bu this is just... something different altogether); the song is just as fantastic as Berkeleys cinematic hallucinations, Winni Shaw's face is as deeply felt as her voice which is perfect for the song, which played alone is--as a part of a sum-- as great as the piece of film to which it contributes. The orchestration veers away in parts from simple showtuney jazz and is more sincere in it's expression... the singing of the chorus (particularly at the end during the "good night baby" lines) is as moving as Shaws voice-- and face, which is so amazingly lit. Which takes us to the cinematography taken by itself... the piece between the track in/outs to shaws face is pure Fritz Lang at his German SIlent best, and the poetic exposition of the content is the purest visual poetry, as well as positively aesthetically pure.. visual renderings of those fantastic lyrics. The dancing, the concept, the death lurking beneath nightlife-- the hint of the devil in the bacchanal, the sadness of the lone kitten. This is probably the only completely NON-stagey piece Berkeley did, where all pretense of this being a Dreamworld Stage in a musical is dispensed with. Even the framing moments on Winni Shaws face "delete" the stage area as she is the only thing lit, and then her face morphs into NYC itself. It's not a Glamorous showpiece in the middle of another film which, because of it's beauty and imagination, textures, breezes, soft & sharp contrasts of geometrically arranged scantily clad peroxide chicks, stands alone from the rest of the film. It is a perfect genuine short film within a film, and is deep, funny, sad, terribly poignant, it has it's own narrative, is perfect in every way, and will go on forever astonishing everyone who will ever see it until doomsday. It's just one of the greatest things anyone has ever done, with anything, with anybody.. period.

As a new yorker I can't tell you how deeply this thing resonates. It's just incredible. As John Waters says rightly on the WB set: "Lullaby is amaazing to everybody who sees it-- you can show it to anyone, today, tomorrow, yesterday, young kids- and they'll go 'wow thats really cool!' I mean, you could show it to, like, FIFTY CENT and he'd be blown away.."

[Michael]

Schreck, that is really an awesome piece you just wrote here. A ravishing gem of cinema, that Lullaby of Broadway segment, indeed.

[denti alligator]

Schreck, I found Carousel - Animal Opera to be wonderfully delightful, but I can't see where your total infatuation and exhiliration are coming from. Please, tell me (us) more.

David, how can we speak of mis-en-scene in "Rose Hobart," which is, after all, a "found film" of sorts?

[HerrSchreck]

Schreck, I found Carousel - Animal Opera to be wonderfully delightful, but I can't see where your total infatuation and exhiliration are coming from. Please, tell me (us) more.

David, how can we speak of mis-en-scene in "Rose Hobart," which is, after all, a "found film" of sorts?

If you can't call it mise en scene Dent then you cant call Cornell a director-- it's that simple. Take Burroughs cut-ups-- was he merely an editor or was he writing something via his juxtapositions? JC's fillms are direct extensions of his boxes which to me most resemble what it is that a stage director does: moving about and reassembling objects that are not of his own origin or creation (in the case of the stage or film, actors-- with their own ambitions, egos, eccentricities, idiocies, appearances and rebelliousnesses.. the actors are not created by the director.. but he puts them to work using the Found Qualities he has discovered during casting... some of them subversive and kept hidden from the actors the same way Cornell would flip the intention of some junk shop object or magazine pic into something never intended.. like the Brazil number in Hobart) to produce something entirely original, and not resident in an isolated, static presentation of any one of the ingredients. Yes he is a director, he is directing found footage the same way a more conventional director directs his found actors-- found as deliberately via "casting" about for material appropriate to his idea, as a director casts his actos for his film or play. Once the elements have been acquired, both set to work in the same way of ordering, composing their elements to express themselves, tell their story yadda. Whomever would say Cornells work in these pieces shouldn't be identified or associated with that of a director because "it's not The Same.. i e easier than what a conventional director does" are missing an extremely rich boat. Imho what JC did is much more difficult and incredibly affecting when fully realized. We're not talking about Jacks Dream which is one of the saddest things I've ever seen on the silent screen.

CarAnOpera: I remember when I first saw The Passion of Joan, there was a spot in the film where I busted out laughing, early on, as the depth and the poetic wisdom of the caricaturing of the church interrogators just got funnier and funnier; Dreyers hatred of these men registered beyond the point of anger veering into deeply sublime laughter at their pathetic cartoon-like absurdity, their characters never capable of think in depth beyond the silliest surface. One of the high points was the man spinning the wheel in the torture chamber, with the cutting amping up-- this thin, stickfigurey, girlishly wimpy looking man with his butt sticking out twirling the wheel and threatening Joan just had me on the floor in hysterics. The way they all whisper to one another with the silliest seriousness, their sourpussed jealousy when she answers with poignancy and sincerity.. human authority comes out looking thoroughly absurd and irredeemably hopeless by the time these buffoons burn her in one of the most traumatic images in all of western art .

Carousel Animal Opera hits me in exactly the same way. The animals are not "us"--they're not symbols-- but they are "the things we do". I laughed because 1) he's managed to arrange and cut the scenes whereby I feel the animals are laughing at us, 2) are laughing at the things we've trained them to do, 3) are reflecting our own behaviors of competition, jealousy, attack, boorishness, showoffy-ness, etc, and look utterly absurd doing so. It's such unique artistic territory that its very hard for me to explain the greatness of the mystery he's achieved here. Sometimes it's very difficult to explain why I respond to his cutting the way I do, but I can tell you 1) it has nothing to do with a peta-like horror of what humans do to animals via zoos, etc, and 2) it has almost nothing to do with seeing the animals as "us". It's far more sophisticated and unique, and the great thing about Cornell is the opacity... there's very little I could "give" you thru words whereby a "key" to understanding or enjoyment is passed on.

The animals are simultaneously superior to us humans, and thoroughly degraded. The piece seems to ridicule human aggression, human ego, the quest for self-importance... everything that a sincere Buddhist would claim is wrong with a western go-getter is there in Carousel. One of the most illustrative scenes is the cutting on the zipping and zapping around of the young paranoid deer/gazelle whatnot.

Animals having a ball dressed up doing thoroughly ridiculous human shit... and mocking us while doing it. Is there more fertile ground for an artist?

[zedz]

Should add Ive never had the pleasure to watch the Diaries of Jean Seberg - is this available in any form?

As with the Rock Hudson film, I believe that Rappaport is unable to distribute the film commercially because of the licensing situation. I suppose it's because it's harder to sustain the 'fair use' argument if he's making money from it. The (tiny) upside is, or at least used to be, that 16mm prints were dirt cheap to acquire from the director.

From the Journals of Jean Seberg seemed to me not quite as successful as Rock Hudson's Home Movies, partly because it's more complex (as Seberg is a more complex figure than Hudson), leaning more towards biography than film criticism / formal analysis (though that aspect is still there). Thus Mary Beth Hurt plays Jean in the film. Nevertheless, it's a must-see if you enjoyed Rock.

[planetjake]

Rock Hudson's Home Movies

It's Water Bearer, though. . .