{abstract cinema} – { feuilleton }

Mona Lisa, Enigma, Breathing

Breathing (1980).

Three short films by Toshio Matsumoto, a director best known for his debut feature Funeral Parade of Roses (1969). Matsumoto made many more short film than he did long ones, four of which were featured here a few years ago. His films of the 1970s are replete with vivid colours, rapid edits, processed visuals and electronic soundtracks. The first two films in the trio follow this form.

Mona Lisa (1973)

The world’s most famous painting provides a stage for a succession of effects created with the Scanimate video synthesizer. No credit for the electronic score.

Enigma (1978)

More Scanimate effects only this time the results are very abstract, a series of spheres and vortices. Again, no credit for the electronic score.

Breathing (1980)

At 25 minutes, the longest and most fascinating of the three films. Breathing also employs video effects but very minimally applied, being a meditation on the “breathing” of the natural world seen in three separate sections that show clouds drifting over mountains, trees moving in the wind and waves breaking against a shore. Each section also features an appearance by dancer Hiroko Horiuchi who strikes a succession of wraithlike poses. Watching this one I was continually distracted by the remarkable soundtrack. “This sounds like the music from Kwaidan,” I thought, and sure enough, the music is credited to Toru Takemitsu, composer of the score for Masaki Kobayashi’s ghost film. Is this original music or did Matsumoto simply lift sections of the soundtrack from the earlier film? I can’t say, but the music combined with the presence of the sinister dancing woman, who might be a cousin of Kobayashi’s lethal Woman of the Snow, is enough to make the whole film seem like an excised episode from the Kwaidan suite.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Phantom, a film by Toshio Matsumoto
• White Hole, a film by Toshio Matsumoto
• Atman, a film by Toshio Matsumoto
• Metastasis, a film by Toshio Matsumoto

Weekend links 720

The Poet and the Siren (1893) by Gustave Moreau.

• “Some books become talismans. Because they are strange, wildly different to the common run of literature; because they are scarce, and only a few precious copies are known to exist; because, perhaps, they liberate by transgressing the moral limits of the day; because their authors are lonely, elusive visionaries; because, sometimes, there is an inexplicable glamour about the book, so that its readers seem to be lured into a preternatural reverie. This book possesses all those attributes.” Mark Valentine in an introduction he wrote for a 1997 reprint of The Book of Jade (1901) by David Park Barnitz. The book’s author was an American writer who died at the age of 23 after publishing this single volume, a collection of poetry inspired by his favourite Decadent writers. Praise from HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Thomas Ligotti has since helped maintain the book’s reputation. The Book of Jade turned up recently at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts. Also the home of an increasingly eclectic list of publications.

• At n+1: The Dam and the Bomb by Walker Mimms, a fascinating essay about the entangling of Cormac McCarthy’s personal history with his novels which makes a few connections I didn’t expect to see. Also a reminder that I’ve yet to read McCarthy’s last two books. Soon…

• The latest installation from teamLab is Resonating Life which Continues to Stand, an avenue of illuminated eggs on the Hong Kong waterfront.

• At The Wire: Symphony of sirens: an interview with Aura Satz, David Toop, Elaine Mitchener, Evelyn Glennie and Raven Chacon.

• At Unquiet Things: The Art of Darkness presents The Sleeper May Awaken: Stephen Mackey’s Unrestful Realms.

• RIP Marian Zazeela. There’s a page here with a selection of her beautiful calligraphic poster designs.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Tomona Matsukawa’s realistic paintings reconstruct fragments of everyday life.

• At Public Domain Review: Thom Sliwowski on The Defenestrations of Prague (1419–1997).

• Trinity (2024), a short film by Thomas Blanchard. There’s a lot more at his YouTube channel.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Lotte Reiniger’s Day.

• Sirens (1984) by Michael Stearns | Sirens (1988) by Daniel Lanois & Brian Eno | Siren Song (2009) by Bat For Lashes

The art of Jordan Belson

Target (Spectrum) (c.1953).

The static art, that is. When you read about Jordan Belson’s abstract films there’s occasionally some mention of his artworks but these haven’t always been easy to see. This situation has changed recently thanks to a dedicated Belson website which includes a gallery section for drawings, pastels, paintings and his collage landscapes. Landscapes aside, most of these are also abstract pieces, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise, and very good they are too. In addition, the site has seven of Belson’s films available for viewing which may not be everything but it’s an improvement on the sole Belson DVD which only features five films. This is all very positive, here’s hoping the site stays around. (Thanks to Stephen for the tip!)

Nebula (1965).

Thoughtform (2001).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive

Oskar Fischinger: Visual Music

Every so often I go looking for more of the documentaries about avant-garde cinema that Keith Griffiths produced for Channel 4 (UK) in the 1980s and 1990s. Oskar Fischinger: Visual Music (1992) is one I’d been after for a while but it took some time to finally surface in searches as a result of the uploader misspelling the name of its subject. Film historian William Moritz describes Fischinger’s films as “visual music”, a term which has since become more widely applied to abstract cinema although not all abstract films have musical scores. Fischinger was a pioneer in this area, not necessarily the first but a film-maker who in the 1930s pushed his techniques to a peak of complexity far beyond anything being attempted elsewhere. The acclaim for his short films attracted the attention of Paramount, MGM and Disney but Hollywood typically didn’t allow him to do the things he was best at once he’d been hired. As I’ve said before, Fischinger’s tests for the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor section of Fantasia were rejected as “too dinky” by the creator of an anthropomorphic cartoon mouse.

Griffiths’ documentary ought have been twice as long as its 25 minutes but at least it was commissioned and broadcast. The interviewees are the aforementioned Moritz and Fischinger’s widow, Elfriede, who helped create some of the films and talks a little about her husband’s techniques. Half the running time is taken up with extracts from the films but the video quality does these no favours (and the picture is too damned dark…uploaders: adjust your gamma!), you’d be better off looking for copies of the complete films elsewhere. More from Moritz’s interview session turned up a year later in Griffiths’ Abstract Cinema, an excellent history of the form which, of course, included Fischinger’s films.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• An Optical Poem by Oskar Fischinger

California Images: Hi-fi for the Eyes

More psychedelia-adjacent visuals. California Images (1985) is another of those video collections that pairs computer graphics and animation with music that’s mostly electronic, 54 minutes of cathode exotica aimed at armchair psychonauts with video-recorders. This one was produced by Pilot Video, and is subtitled “Hi-fi for the Eyes”, the term “hi-fi” doing a lot of work there for an NTSC video cassette. The quality, artistic as well as technical, may not be first-rate but I’m still pleased to see videos like this being resurrected. As I’ve said before, nobody would want to reissue these compilations today, especially the present example whose contents don’t always work well together.

All the pieces are presented as separate shorts rather than running into each other, with most of them being very simple computer animation or the products of video feedback plus video synthesis. On the visual side, many of them seem to have had the slit-scan lightshow from 2001: A Space Odyssey as their ideal, while their soundtracks are mostly New-Age synth burblings which range from the okay to the mediocre. Between these clips are a couple of other items which don’t suit the hippy-trippy mood at all, especially the one titled Speed, several minutes of nocturnal driving footage accompanied by harsh industrial rhythms more suited to the TV Wipeout collection released by Cabaret Voltaire in 1984. Oddest of all is the inclusion of Oskar Fischinger’s Allegretto (1936), a classic of abstract animation whose meticulous artistry puts to shame many of the other offerings. The collection ends with Ed Emshwiller’s Sunstone (1979), one of the earliest attempts to push computer animation beyond pattern-making. Emshwiller’s luminous faces look towards the digital future. I remain partial to analogue video effects, however, and Electric Light Voyage, aka Ascent 1, is still my favourite of all the TV lightshows I’ve seen to date. The search for more like this one will continue.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dazzle
• The Gate to the Mind’s Eye