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“One of the livelist of Mary Ellen Bute’s abstract films, DADA was intended to be part of a Universal Newsreel segment, showing Bute and her partner Ted Nemeth at work in their tiny New York studio. No copies of the newsreel itself are known to exist at this time.” – Cecile StarrRead More »
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The first and greatest American Surrealist, Joseph Cornell is best known for his boxes. The best of his mysterious assemblages of dime-store tchochkes and paper ephemera in little hand-made cabinets perfectly realize the elusive sublime at the heart of Surrealism, while avoiding the juvenile theatrics of his European colleagues.Read More »
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Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (1964) is a masterpiece of the complexities of voyeurism and duration. The 36-minute film shows a young man apparently receiving oral sex, though the viewer only ever sees his head and shoulders – leaving the person performing the act in our imagination.Read More »
Adapting its title and theme from Thomas De Quincey’s murder text, this long-overdue return to narrative cinema by the great British filmmaker Peter Whitehead is based around a mesmerising psycho-geographical exploration of modern day Vienna. The film incorporates a record of the subversive underbelly of the city into a poetic meditation on conspiracy theory, ecoterrorism, time and cinema, retracing the story of The Third Man. Adapted from a trilogy of Whitehead’s own Nohzone novels, the objective and subjective becomes blurred as the film director merges with the fictional detective in a journey into the murky activities of covert counter-insurgency groups. Kaleidoscopic in intent, the film mixes Noh theatre, Victorian novels, Vienna after the war, opium, domain names and Jacob’s ladder “pitched twixt Heaven and Charring Cross”.Read More »
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“Many early short subjects cloaked genuine aesthetic discourse inside novelty approaches, such as the exploration of slow, fast, or reverse motion, distortion and abstraction, and other altered perceptions induced via camera tricks. The transitions of zoo animals from abstract to realistic renditions highlight the differences between the two states.” – Bruce PosnerRead More »
“Mary Ellen Bute’s first color film tells a story in abstraction of an orange/red triangle imprisoned behind a grid of vertical and horizontal lines under a sky-blue expanse, perhaps representing freedom. J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fuge in D Minor adds dramatic tension to the visual variables in motion.” – Cecile StarrRead More »
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A collaboration between Joseph Cornell and Rudy Burckhardt, Aviary is an impression of Union Square. The location held a particular fascination for Cornell who wanted to establish a foundation for artists and art therapy there. In the film, he treats the park as an outdoor aviary. – P. Adams SitneyRead More »
A young woman with a guilty conscience travels in her dreams through strange and surreal passages reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno. This is an excellent experimental arthouse film for adults.Read More »
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A documentary film exploring the manner in which a determined young man overcame a basic mental defect and became a useful member of society. Insightful editing techniques reveal the dreams, ideals and problems that face a large segment of the American male population. Educational. Background music written and performed by the Devo orchestra.–B.C.Read More »