{animation} – { feuilleton }

Two short films by Virgil Widrich

Virgil Widrich is an Austrian film-maker with a very inventive approach to the materials of cinema. There’s some crossover in the two films here with animation, although I don’t think Widrich would consider himself an animator as such. The technique is one of many he draws upon.

Copy Shop (2001) is a simple scenario in which a man who works at an establishment named “Copy Shop” ends up populating his world with copies of himself as a result of some magical action (or malfunction) of his photocopying machine. In a self-reflexive twist, the entire film has been made with photocopies, although all the action was shot initially with a digital camera. Every frame of the edited material was printed out, photocopied and shot again as a succession of stills on copier paper, some of which are subject to tears or the various misprintings you get with cheap copies.

Fast Film (2003) expands on the copying idea which it applies to Hollywood’s history and cinematic modes. This is one of those films that’s more fun to watch than to attempt to describe, but it’s essentially one long chase scene which uses cinema history as its raw material. Metafilms that create new works by cutting together pre-existing footage aren’t exactly uncommon, I did something like this myself in the 1980s using video tapes. Widrich’s metafilm is an epic in miniature, a deliriously complex piece of work that assembles a huge variety of film clips which have been copied onto paper then animated into a collage of non-stop action. (Wikipedia says the film used 65,000 paper printouts of images from 400 live-action films.) There’s so much to all of this, and some sections go by so fast, that it warrants repeated viewing: actors from one film rescue (or fight with) actors from another; cars race along the carriages of runaway trains; actors swap bodies or faces. Much of this is done by folding the copied clips into origami shapes; the final sequence is a dogfight with paper planes. Widrich was the director and scenarist but the animators who made the whole thing work ought to be credited as well: Gernot Egger, Michael Lang, Markus Loder-Taucher, Alexandra Pauser, David Reischl, Walter Rafelsberger, Christian Ursnik, Vinh-San Nguyen, Carmen Völker, Mario Waldhuber, Gerald Zahn; additional animation: Eveline Consolati, Thomas Grundnigg, Andreas Künz, Stefan Braulik.

Three short films by Robert Morgan

A little nightmare fuel for the run-up to Halloween. Robert Morgan is a British animator whose filmography to date has comprised a handful of short films plus a single feature, Stopmotion, which is on my future viewing list. All of his work is firmly situated in the horror sphere, a commendable stance when so many animators must be tempted by the financial rewards of advertising work and the pressure to make family-friendly comedies about cute characters with big eyes.

The Separation.

Two of the films linked here are very short so I won’t burden them with description. The Cat with Hands (2001) is one I’m sure I’d seen before, possibly on Channel 4 since the channel is credited at the end. Or maybe I dreamed something similar… With a running time of just over nine minutes The Separation (2003) is the longest and most ambitious of the three, a story of conjoined twins which is like David Cronenberg filming something of his own in the style of Dave Borthwick’s The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb. Morgan’s oeuvre owes much to Borthwick’s animated grotesquerie. They Have Changed Their Faces is more of an experimental piece but very effective all the same; creepy in every sense of the word. If you like these there’s more to be seen at Morgan’s YouTube channel.

They Have Changed Their Faces.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb
• The Magic Art of Jan Švankmajer
• Jiří Barta’s Labyrinth of Darkness
• The Web by Joan Ashworth
• Jiří Barta’s Pied Piper

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

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 844

Crivelli’s Room I (1967) by Gillian Ayers.

• “This is the first film ever made about HP Lovecraft—and almost no one has seen it. Shot in 1989–90, it features unique interviews with Lovecraft’s friends and colleagues. It has sat unfinished for more than thirty-five years. We need your help to complete it and release it for the first time.” Lovecraft: When the Stars are Right, a documentary directed by Seán Martin, is asking for funding assistance to help digitise the extant footage. Watch the crowdfunding trailer.

• New music: Oblique by Ghost Dubs; Serpentine by Christer Bothén / Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin; The Cardboard Falcon by Mico Nonet.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The Lost Stradivarius, by John Meade Falkner.

• At Nautilus: Kristen French talks to Devon Stoliker about the latest researches into psilocybin experiences using an fMRI scanner.

• At Colossal: “On vintage boards, Lou Benesch conjures the fantastic world of The Magician”.

• Amazonie (2020): music by Jonathan Fitoussi; animation by Jules Guérin.

• The Strange World of…Adam Curtis.

• RIP Frank Beard.

• Rolling Stone

• The Pink Room (1988) by Seigen Ono | The Darkened Room (1995) by David Toop | The Room Of Accidental Geometry (2000) by Harold Budd