{film} – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 850

Peacock Mandala (no date) by Judith Drury.

• A few links related to my own activities this week. Firstly, the mix of the week is a guest mix I put together for The Invisible College. I haven’t made a properly mixed mix for a while. This one was made with Audacity, an application that’s free, open source and multi-platform. Secondly, there’s the news that Ghosts on the Cam, another collection of spectral tales compiled by Robert Lloyd Parry, will be published by Swan River Press in December. I’ll have more to say about my cover art for the book at a later date. And on the subject of cover art, my cover for The Legend of Charlie Fish by Josh Rowntree is being reused by Planeta9 for a Czech edition of the novel.

• Halloween approaches. At Wormwoodiana Mark Valentine looks at the first modern ghost story anthology, The Ghost Book edited by Cynthia Asquith, which was published 100 years ago this month.

• At Smithsonian Magazine: “The Icebergs is one of Frederic Edwin Church’s most spectacular paintings. For decades, no one knew where it was.”

• New music: Passage by Chris Meyer’s Alias Zone featuring Robert Rich; Window To Askoy by Strugatsky Brothers.

• RIP Mighty Sparrow. Related: Two hours of Mighty Sparrow’s music at The Explorer’s Room.

• At the BFI: Josh Slater-Williams chooses 10 great South Korean science-fiction films.

• At Nautilus: This obscure 1960s guide to LSD holds up. Kristen French reports.

• At Colossal: The painted mandalas of Mu Pan.

• The Strange World of…Steve Reich.

• Bastardica

• Mandala (1973) by Stomu Yamash’ta’s Red Buddha Theatre | Mandala (1980) by Fondation | Sand Mandala (1997) by Philip Glass

Panic by Sándor Reisenbüchler

I suspect that if Sándor Reisenbüchler had been French, say, rather than Hungarian his animated films might be better known today. Panic (1979), like Moon Flight (1975), is another of his short exercises in Pop-art science fiction, a rush through a series of vivid and hyperactive scenes where everything is flattened and stylised, often to a point of abstraction. Panic, as its title suggests, is an especially frenzied piece in which three of the humanoid creatures living on a small island are sucked into a flying saucer occupied by human beings who take their captives to a city where they bombard them with unidentified rays. Whatever the creatures are, the experiments cause them to mutate and grow to a giant size after which they retaliate against their captors.

All of Reisenbüchler’s films were short ones, and all the ones I’ve seen to date follow a similar format: a simple narrative where the vivid graphics are as much of interest as the story. On the graphic level Panic is incredibly complex, composed throughout of very brief shots, nearly all of which show entirely new scenes and bits of collage or other visual invention. As for the story, this is probably the closest thing you’ll find to a Hungarian take on the kaiju film.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Moon Flight by Sándor Reisenbüchler

Weekend links 849

Mushroom Lady poster (1967) by East Totem West.

• “I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.” Composer Steve Reich talks to Flora Willson about his long career. More Reich: live performances from 1976 by Steve Reich and Musicians of Six Pianos and Music For Mallet Instruments, Voices And Organ.

• At Aeon: Eric Leas on toadstools and toxins. “When I found the mushroom Amanita muscaria being sold in candy wrappers, I uncovered legal loopholes, dangerous dosages and more.”

• At Little White Lies: Nicolas Winding Refn on his return to cinema—and from the dead—with a neon-hued fable about a father-daughter relationship from hell.

• At Bandcamp Daily: Faust reunite without reuniting. The surviving members of the group return with four solo albums.

• New music: Noon by Richard Skelton and Lawrence English.

• Mix of the week: a mix for The Wire by Kaja Draksler.

• Winners of Bird Photographer of the Year 2026.

• At Dennis Cooper’s it’s Luchino Visconti‘s Day.

• Wyrd Daze relaunches with a new issue.

• Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow (1967) by The Strawberry Alarm Clock | Amanita Kingdom (2014) by Moon Coven | Amanita (2025) by Huong Federkeil

Two short films by István Orosz

Hungarian artist István Orosz has directed fifteen short animated films to date, and co-directed three more, yet he’s known more for his drawings than his films, especially those works which follow MC Escher by combining a careful graphic technique with an exploration of optical illusion. Orosz’s artistic interests naturally extend to his animations which have never been easy to see online despite so many of them being relatively recent productions.

A Kert (The Garden, 1993) is a recent arrival at Rarefilmm where it’s possible to watch it on the web page but it should really be seen at a large size in order to appreciate the texture of the engraved visuals. In previous posts I’ve highlighted some of the many examples of films which animate engraved illustrations. Orosz does the same here but with a unique difference in the way he makes his original drawing match the appearance of the collaged artwork. The whole thing is beautifully done, as is the story itself, in which a small boy explores a mysterious garden in the home of an equally mysterious woman.

A rajzoló (The Drawer, 2016) has been on YouTube for a while but I’d missed it in the past which suggests I ought to make a more determined search for Orosz’s other films. Pencil drawing is the subject but The Sketcher might be a more suitable English translation of the title, “drawer” giving the impression that we’ll be watching a film about furniture. This one is a simpler in style than The Garden although vaguely related, with both films concerning characters whose true nature is only revealed at the very end. There’s also a nod to Orosz’s optical illusions in the tesselated pavement, and in the mazes which are a recurrent feature of his own drawings.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mazes, a film by István Orosz
• False perspective

Weekend links 848

Exhibition poster, 1970.

• RIP Peter Max, an artist who made the popular manifestations of psychedelic graphics near-synonymous with his own name which was always typeset and prominently displayed with a copyright symbol on his printed creations. Max’s formulation of the artist-as-brand was so extensive he makes those who attempted similar things look like slackers. Even Salvador Dalí didn’t have his own breakfast cereal. Hippy transcendence fused with naked commercialism. More Max: The 1971 Peter Max Astrologicalendar; Riverside Drive, a Max-designed typeface; Max on TV: The Fifth Dimension Special: An Odyssey in the Cosmic Universe of Peter Max (1970); Peter Max book covers, puzzles and more.

• “Film is a very unusual combination of things because it has an incredible financial commitment of spending, yet it has to be free and creative. To be any good, the cinema that I do has to be free and yet there are many constraints on it now and my best films were made in an era of wildness…” The late Jeremy Thomas talking to Nick James in 2014 about his long career in cinema.

• At Nautilus: The Promise and Peril of Toad Smoking, the Everest of Psychedelics. Kristen French talks to Kimon de Greef about his new book, The Ego Trip: Psychedelic Toads, a Trail of Deaths and the Guru Who Peddled Transcendence.

• At Smithsonian Mag: Thomas Waters on six ways that people of the past used magic to protect their homes, from witch bottles to mystical symbols.

• New music: September Nineteen Sixty Nine by Adam Wiltzie / Jóhann Jóhannsson; Now We Can Sing by Max Richter; Norfolk by Richard Sage.

• At CDM: Adam Wiltzie talks to Peter Kirn about his posthumous collaboration with Jóhann Jóhannsson.

• At Public Domain Review: Thomas W. Laqueur on dogs in the paintings of Paolo Veronese.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on Leonora Carrington The Hearing Trumpet (1977).

• At the BFI: Kim Newman chooses 10 great sci-fi B-movies.

• Old music: King Crimson on German TV in 1969.

• 1969 (1969) by The Stooges | 1969 (1983) by The Sisters Of Mercy | 1969 (2002) by Boards Of Canada