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Nearly two years after their American release, and not a moment too soon, the films which comprise Kenneth Anger’s superb Magick Lantern Cycle turn up at last in the UK. Good to see these being produced by the BFI, their previous collections of shorts by the Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer are distinguished by quality [...]

I said, “Girl, you drank a lot of Drink Me,
But you ain’t in a Wonderland
You know I might-a be there to greet you, child,
When your trippin’ ship touches sand.”
Donovan, The Trip (1966).
Most of the key texts of the psychedelic period tend to be either non-fiction—Huxley’s Doors of Perception, Leary’s Psychedelic Experience—or spiritual works such as [...]

The original Polish poster by the incredible Franciszek Starowieyski.
The shrinking pool of films still unavailable on DVD contracted by at least one title recently with the surprise appearance in the UK of The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (Sanatorium pod klepsydra; 1973) from the distinctively-named Mr Bongo Films. I’ve been waiting to see this for at least twenty [...]

Buchinger’s Boot Marionettes was founded in 2004 by Patrick Sims, Mafalda da Camara and Richard Penny. This pair of grotesques are from a show entitled The Vestibular Folds, described as “a tale about the engraving and destruction of a metaphysical gramophone record”. There is more…

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jan Svankmajer: The Complete Short Films

Inspiration (1949).
Karel Zemen (1910–1989) is a filmmaker I’m often telling people about but whose work isn’t easy to see. So it’s good to find that YouTube has gained some clips of his animations and examples of the partly-animated adventure films he made in the Fifties and Sixties. Zeman was yet another great Czech animator [...]

Two short films by Maya Deren’s husband are now available for viewing at Ubuweb. I’ve known about Hammid’s work for years but this is the first time I’ve seen any of it so these additions are very welcome. In a reversal of the usual state of affairs, the works of the wife overshadowed those of [...]

Dream works: Jan Svankmajer
Marina Warner on the great Surrealist.

Historia Naturae, Suita (1967).
Another very welcome DVD release from the BFI. Svankmajer’s shorts have always been my favourites of his film work. I love his Alice feature film (for me, the best screen adaptation of Alice in Wonderland), and Faust (although the jabbering devils get annoying) but on the whole his longer films don’t [...]

left: event poster by Hapshash & the Coloured Coat.
right: International Times 14-Hour Technicolor Dream special issue, April 1967.
The ICA goes psychedelic, baby. Lucky Londoners get to gorge themselves on this lot next Saturday.
2007 is a year of many anniversaries: twenty years since Acid House, thirty since the release of Never Mind The Bollocks, forty [...]

A very welcome release, these are some of my favourite films (I reviewed Street of Crocodiles for Horror: the Definitive Guide to the Cinema of Fear earlier this year). Most of the early ones can be found on the Region 1 release from Kino International but that collection is poorly transferred and the interface has [...]

Diminuto, 7″x5″x6″ (2004)
Antique hardware, bone, leather, cast painted glass eyes.

Lupe, 11″x6″x16″ (2005)
Antique hardware, brass, bone, glove leather, painted wood ball, glass eyes.
Gorgeous stuff, reminds me of some of Jan Svankmajer’s sculptural works (which are possibly an inspiration) but with an added dimension of Victorian playfulness.
Via Boing Boing.