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Jean Cocteau looking nothing less than fabulous in what I guess is 1955 since the writer is sporting his Académie française medal, an award bestowed upon him that year. The ceremonial sword is his own design, needless to say, and the curiously-tinted photographs are by Frank Scherschel for LIFE. The colours and lavish decor—those metallic [...]

Among recent DVD releases there’s a handful worth noting here. First up is another great collection of rare cinema from the Center for Visual Music, 3 Films by Elias Romero.
Elias Romero is considered to be the Grandfather of the Light Show. In San Francisco in 1956 he began developing a performance medium using overhead projectors. [...]

The enigmatic hibiscus: Le Testament d’Orphée (1960).
Here’s a conundrum for you: what connects Jean Cocteau, Ravi Shankar, Doctor Who and March of the Penguins? Read on and all will become crystal clear….
This latest { feuilleton } examination of the byways of musical culture isn’t concerned so much with an individual artist, more with a particular [...]

left: Hanging (2004); Judging (2004).
San Francisco artist Jason Driskill paints, writes and creates his own digital artwork and video, often with himself as the main model. This multi-disciplined approach is a rare thing among artists predominantly concerned with gay themes, despite the example set by significant forebears such as Jean Cocteau and Derek Jarman. [...]

One of the best—and most entertaining—films to come out of the Dada/Surrealist period, Entr’acte (1924) is also worth watching for the appearance of notable figures such as Francis Picabia (who initiated the project), Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Erik Satie.
This extraordinary early film from director René Clair was originally made to fill an interval between [...]

Monsieur Wiley in yesterday’s comments reminded me of George Franju’s seldom seen Judex, a 1963 film based on the Feuillade serials of the same name. Louis Feuillade (1873–1925), as you really ought to know by now, was the director of the original Fantômas serials (1913–14) and also Les Vampires (1915–16), obvious forerunners of Diabolik with [...]

Rose Hobart (1936)
Dir: Joseph Cornell
17mins, tinted B&W
The first experimental film by Surrealist artist Joseph Cornell (1903–1972) is available for viewing at Ubuweb (where they list the years of his birth and death incorrectly). Cornell’s famous boxes are highly-regarded and still influential but his films receive less attention. This is the first one of them I’ve [...]

Harry Smith in the middle of the Twentieth Century with some of his drawings.
The first European exhibition of work by artist, writer, filmmaker, collector, Kabbalist, ethnographer…okay, polymath Harry Smith, opens today at the Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland. The exhibition runs from 2nd May–8th June 2007. In addition, there’s a companion exhibition, Harry Smith Anthology [...]

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
Dir: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid.
Screenplay: Maya Deren.
Cast: Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid.
Music: Teiji Ito.
18mins, B&W.
Meshes of the Afternoon is one of the most influential works in American experimental cinema. A non-narrative work, it has been identified as a key example of the “trance film,” in which a protagonist appears in a dreamlike [...]

Orphée aux points by Jean Cocteau (1950).
An exhibition of Cocteau drawings from the collection of
Dominique Bert opens today at the Louvre des Antiquaires, Paris.
Jean Cocteau (1899–1963): Collection privée de Dominique Bert
23rd March–22nd April 2007
Le Louvre des Antiquaires
2, Place du Palais Royal
75001 PARIS
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Fantômas
• La Villa Santo Sospir by Jean Cocteau

…Fantômas was championed by the Parisian avant-garde, first by the young poets gathered around Guillaume Apollinaire, who, together with Max Jacob, founded a Société des Amis de Fantômas in 1913, and later by the surrealists. In July 1914, in the literary review Mercure de France, Apollinaire declared the imaginary richness of Fantômas unparalleled. The same [...]

Semina, #1–9.
A Return Trip to a Faraway Place Called Underground
By HOLLAND COTTER
New York Times, January 26, 2007
Time is forever. Love is the goal. Art is what you are, not what you do. Many young artists and poets in California in the 1950s and ’60s felt and lived this way. And a traveling band of [...]

Finally…well, we’ll see. Forgive my sceptical tone, these announcements have been cropping up for years although this one seems genuine, with an Amazon page and everything. Good to know that it’s a Fantoma production since they did a great job with Jodorowsky’s Fando y Lis.

The enigmatic Marjorie Cameron portrays the
Scarlet Woman for Inauguration of [...]

In my obsession with all things Orson Welles, his 1936 production of Macbeth holds a special fascination, partly for being my favourite Shakespeare play, and partly for the curiosity of its production—an all-black cast that included genuine Haitian drummers who famously claimed to have drummed a Broadway critic to death after he gave the play [...]

A 35-minute color film by Cocteau entitled La Villa Santo Sospir. Shot in 1952, this is an “amateur film” done in 16mm, a sort of home movie in which Cocteau takes the viewer on a tour of a friend’s villa on the French coast (a major location used in Testament of Orpheus). The house itself [...]