{ feuilleton }

Avatar

• • • Being a journal by artist and designer John Coulthart, cataloguing interests, obsessions and passing enthusiasms.

Archive for the {animation} category

 

Tadanori Yokoo animations

yokoo13.jpg

Kiss Kiss Kiss (1964). A follow-up to yesterday’s post, and three short films by the artist from the 1960s. As animations go these are fairly crude but they do have the benefit of showing Yokoo’s sense of humour, something which isn’t necessarily so obvious in his poster art. Kiss Kiss Kiss is a short sequence [...]

Posted in {animation}, {film} | No comments »

 


La femme qui se poudre

bokanowski1.jpg

The DVD collection of films by Piotr Kamler turned up last week so I’ve been alternating viewing of that with shorts by Patrick Bokanowski. The latter is less an animator than a filmmaker who uses animation or film effects to achieve his aims, together with masks and very stylised performances. Bokanowski’s early film La femme [...]

Posted in {animation}, {film}, {music} | No comments »

 


Weekend links 159

francov2.jpg

El Banquete Magnético (2011) by Cristina Francov. • Did Vertigo Introduce Computer Graphics to Cinema? asks Tom McCormack. He means Saul Bass’s title sequence which mostly uses still harmonographs but also features some animated moments by John Whitney. •  Temple of the Vanities by Thomas Jorion. “Pictured here are political monuments and munitions depots, hulking [...]

Posted in {animation}, {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {gay}, {music}, {painting}, {photography}, {psychedelia}, {technology} | No comments »

 


Ray Harryhausen, 1920–2013

harryhausen.jpg

Concept art for Jason and the Argonauts (1963). He could also draw, something the obituaries won’t necessarily mention. I wasn’t aware of Ray Harryhausen’s many detailed preliminary drawings until I had the good fortune to see him give a talk at the Preston SF Group in the early 1990s. I recall mention being made of [...]

Posted in {animation}, {fantasy}, {film}, {music} | 4 comments »

 


OffOn by Scott Bartlett

bartlett1.jpg

Another gem of experimental filmmaking, Scott Bartlett’s short from 1967 hits all the buttons of psychedelic imagery: disembodied eyes, moiré patterns, solarisation, dancing figures, naked women, oil effects, oversatured hues, and superimposition. The difference between this film and others of the period is that OffOn is largely a product of video techniques, some of which—video [...]

Posted in {abstract cinema}, {animation}, {electronica}, {film}, {music}, {psychedelia} | Comments Off

 


Le labyrinthe and Coeur de secours

kamler1.jpg

Le labyrinthe (1969). Among the new arrivals at Ubuweb there’s the very welcome addition of more animated films by Polish director Piotr Kamler. Kamler’s incredible Chronopolis (1982) was posted there late last year, a longer work than these shorter films which are nonetheless fascinating in themselves. For a start they show the range of Kamler’s [...]

Posted in {animation}, {electronica}, {film}, {music} | Comments Off

 


Weekend links 156

leonard.jpg

Le Vampire (c. 1903) by Agathon Léonard. Via Beautiful Century. • Two masters of rumbling atmospherics interviewed at The Quietus: Bobby Krlic aka The Haxan Cloak talks to Maya Kalev while Thomas Köner talks to Joseph Burnett. Discussions about the arts now have an awkward, paralyzed quality: few judgments about the independent excellences of works [...]

Posted in {animation}, {architecture}, {art}, {books}, {design}, {electronica}, {film}, {music}, {photography}, {sculpture} | Comments Off

 


The Web by Joan Ashworth

theweb.jpg

Another animated gem, The Web (1987) is an eighteen-minute film based on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels which dramatises the lethal duel between Flay and Swelter. Director Joan Ashworth reduces the cast to manservant, cook, and bedridden earl, no doubt for reasons of economy since the film was originally a student work. Economy or not, for [...]

Posted in {animation}, {books}, {fantasy}, {film} | Comments Off

 


Jiri Barta’s Pied Piper

barta1.jpg

The last time I mentioned Jiri Barta’s extraordinary animation of the Pied Piper story there were only short clips on YouTube. That was several years ago, in which time the 53-minute film has been posted in its entirety. Barta pulls the tale away from its sanitised derivations back to its darker origins in the folk [...]

Posted in {animation}, {film}, {horror} | 4 comments »

 


Allegro Non Troppo

allegro1.jpg

Having watched Disney’s Fantasia (1940) recently, I had to search out this as a palliative. There’s a lot I like about the Disney film but the explanatory interludes for the Great Unwashed are tiresome, I’ve always loathed Mickey Mouse’s voice (although the Sorceror’s Apprentice sequence is fine), and, for a film that aspired to artistic [...]

Posted in {animation}, {film}, {music} | 2 comments »

 


Une Collection Particulière by Walerian Borowczyk

borowczyk.jpg

British animator Bob Godfrey died this week but as a result of copyright restrictions there’s little of his work on YouTube aside from the films he made for children’s television in the 1970s and 1980s. One of those series, Roobarb (1974), is a personal favourite, but Godfrey had a long career in animation, and worked [...]

Posted in {animation}, {film} | 1 comment »

 


Spirit of Talk Talk by James Marsh

marsh1.jpg

In which artist James Marsh animates the paintings of his which appear on Talk Talk’s album covers. This is a promo film for Spirit Of Talk Talk, a cover version collection released last year on Fierce Panda. Thanks to Thom for the tip!

Posted in {animation}, {art}, {film}, {music}, {painting} | 1 comment »

 


Rhinoceros by Jan Lenica

lenica1.jpg

As noted here last year, Polish artist Jan Lenica (1928–2001) was also an animator as well as a celebrated poster designer. Die Nashörner (1964) is an 11-minute condensation of Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros that no doubt works best if you’re familiar with the play but which nevertheless contains some funny moments, especially when “Rhinocerosism” starts to spread. [...]

Posted in {animation}, {film}, {theatre} | 1 comment »

 


Chronopolis by Piotr Kamler

chronopolis3.jpg

Another gem at Ubuweb, and nothing to do with JG Ballard’s SF story of the same name, Piotr Kamler’s Chronopolis (1983) is a 50-minute animated science fiction film, albeit science fiction of a much more abstract variety than one usually finds in cinema. I’m generally exasperated by the way film and TV SF does little more [...]

Posted in {animation}, {comics}, {film}, {science fiction} | 3 comments »

 


Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets

quays1.jpg

It’s not exactly the most appropriate moment to be recommending an exhibition in New York given the chaos in the city following the recent hurricane. However… Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets has been running at MoMA since August, and will continue into early 2013. A copy of the catalogue turned [...]

Posted in {animation}, {art}, {books}, {design}, {film}, {theatre}, {typography} | 5 comments »

 


Gloves

klingerglove.jpg

A Glove: Anxieties (1881) by Max Klinger. Although the Glove‘s scenario was given its due Germanic explication by contemporary critics, it defies rational analysis. The last picture, which was seen as a kind of happy ending to the glove’s peregrinations, is particularly ambiguous and leaves the whole meaning of the series in doubt. The story is [...]

Posted in {animation}, {art}, {black and white}, {film}, {painting}, {photography}, {surrealism}, {symbolists} | 5 comments »

 


Weekend links 127

whirlpool.jpg

M15, The Whirlpool Galaxy photographed by Martin Pugh. The overall and deep space winner of Astronomy Photographer of the Year, 2012. • The Final Academy, the series of William Burroughs-themed events that took place in London and Manchester in 1982, will be celebrated at the Horse Hospital, London, on 27th October. Academy 23, a publication [...]

Posted in {animation}, {architecture}, {art}, {black and white}, {books}, {burroughs}, {electronica}, {film}, {music}, {photography}, {science}, {theatre} | 2 comments »

 


Dom by Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica

dom.jpg

Dom. Having referred this week to individual animated films by Borowczyk and Lenica here’s their ten-minute collaboration from 1959. “Dom” means “house”, with the house in question providing a vague framing device for otherwise disconnected episodes, some of which repeat themselves. It’s more of a curio than anything, most interesting (again) for the moments that would [...]

Posted in {animation}, {film} | Comments Off

 


Les Jeux des Anges by Walerian Borowczyk

jeux1.jpg

Les Jeux des Anges. Following yesterday’s post, we can be certain that Terry Gilliam had seen Les Jeux des Anges because in 2001 he included it in a list of ten favourite animated films. Jan Lenica co-directed Dom (1959) with Walerian Borowczyk but doesn’t work on this film which is the darkest and strangest of [...]

Posted in {animation}, {film}, {horror} | Comments Off

 


Labirynt by Jan Lenica

labirynt1.jpg

Labirynt. One of the links at the weekend was to this post about the favourite Polish posters of the Brothers Quay, a piece which included an example by designer and illustrator Jan Lenica (1928–2001). Lenica, like the Quays, was also a filmmaker who started out by producing short animations, Labirynt (1963) being one of these [...]

Posted in {animation}, {collage}, {film}, {surrealism} | Comments Off

 


 




 

tracker

 


 

“feed your head”