Experimental

“I learned and stole a lot from James Broughton…
See this movie!” – Gus Van Sant

Review (from slackerwood.com)
James Broughton’s epitaph says about all you need to know about him: Adventure — not predicament.

For those who want to know more, the splendid documentary Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton is a terrific tribute to the revered poet, writer and pioneering experimental filmmaker.

Born in 1913, Broughton overcame a difficult childhood to have a long, fulfilling career and personal life. His father died when Broughton was five, and his overbearing mother sent him to military school at age 9, hoping to break him of his effeminate tendencies. These experiences no doubt informed his work and his lust for life and love as an adult.Read More »

Un film poème en 18 vagues, comme autant de scènes pour décrire Paris et ses paysages urbains traversés par un “jeune mineur étranger isolé”, les attentats, les roses blanches, l’état d’urgence, le bleu-blanc-rouge, l’océan atlantique et ses traversées, les volcans, la beat-box, la révolte, la colère, la violence d’Etat, un chant révolutionnaire, le silence, et la joie…, rien que la joie.Read More »

A visual onslaught of artistic ideas, showing how art relates to and intertwines with our daily lives.

Art, personified here as an opera-singing Valkyrie, hang-glides down from the clouds to check on the state of the arts in Australia – from painting, writing and music to dance, theatre, puppetry and sculpture. Featuring John Bell, Anna Volska, Reg Livermore, Rory O’Donohue, David Gulpilil and the work of Thomas Keneally and Patrick White among others, this is a phantasmagoria of filmic effects.Read More »

A satirical enquiry into the origins of media, their distribution and their effects on the way we behave.

Those familiar with cartoonist Bruce Petty’s award winning film Leisure will enjoy the same sharp wit brought to bear on another institution, the media. This three-part film is a satirical enquiry into the origins of media, their distribution and their effects on the way we behave. The first part provides a brief history of print, radio, television and film. The second part proposes that a market-placed media produces the problem of monopolisation leading to mediocrity. Finally, Petty produces a caricature of the way ideas form in the mind from reading print, as distinct from passive looking and listening.Read More »

From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
A film record of one of Claes Oldenburg’s celebrated happenings – largely improvised, mysterious or humorous, neo-Dadaist or surreal events, not necessarily causal or meaningful, which sardonically comment on an absurd universe and aim at fusing actor and spectator, art and life.Read More »

A girl who is not aware she crossed over into the afterlife; is life itself but a dream within a dream?

The title’s a misnomer: dream water’s not to be waded through, better rather to drift. Splashing along the lazy river you’re just going roundabout, but if you catch the natural current it’s got an outlet in mind. If the dream’s a reflection and the stream is its source then that’s the direction we’ll drift: beyond. Drink deep from the cosmic microwave background radiation and you’ve got the shimmer of a looking-glass alright: this screen’s glazed with waves. The pool’s got defined walls only until they disappear in the haze; hallucination concealing hallucination offers strange clarity – that’s vaporwave.Read More »

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Tumble demonstrates Richard Kern’s departure from narrative filmmaking in the early nineties. He was clearly more interested now in photography, and specially in the merging of documentary and model photography.Read More »

Quote:
This video is an ensemble piece that contains a collection of experimental performance art pieces by various performers. The entire video takes place in The Kitchen, an enormous artist’s loft in the midst of New York City. All the performance pieces are what could be considered Avant-garde in nature, though that term has fallen out of use today in order to make way for the more pedestrian and commonplace whitewash term of alternative; however, when this video was created, the style and feel of each of these pieces was more intentionally risk-filled and groundbreaking than what we see today as is the nature with the ideals of the avant-garde–I don’t think the term alternative had been coined and/or abused as yet, people were still saying New Wave or Punk or using terms even more inaccurate and less flattering. Don’t get me wrong, these differing pieces are new and experimental concepts in art but all are carefully rehearsed and well scripted, there is some, but very little improvisation on the whole. Read More »

PLOT: This animated short by Norman McLaren features synchronization of image and sound in the truest sense of the word. To make this film, McLaren employed novel optical techniques to compose the piano rhythms of the sound track, which he then moved, in multicolor, onto the picture area of the screen so that, in effect, you see what you hear.Read More »