A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Animated films
One of a series of creepy children’s illustrations by Alexander Ovchinnikov which look like the work of pioneering animator Lotte Reiniger pushed into a darker world. Ovchinnikov’s Behance portfolio has a similar set mixing silhouettes with photography.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
The Düsseldorf maestros are treated to some animated illustration in this 1979 film by Roger Mainwood which takes Kraftwerk’s Autobahn as its soundtrack. Mark at Strange Attractor provided the tip and he compares the animation style to René Laloux and Roland Topor’s Fantastic Planet (1973). The purple humanoid floating through surreal landscapes is certainly reminiscent of Laloux’s film, but Autobahn also reminds me of Bruno Bozzetto’s Allegro non troppo (1977) and, given that Mainwood’s animation comes a couple of years later, it may well have been inspired by it. Bozzetto’s film is a feature-length “adult” response to Walt Disney’s Fantasia which takes the Fantasia format—well-known classical themes illustrated by animated sequences—but does so in a slightly more grotesque or risqué fashion. Much of Bozzetto’s film seems less daring today than it was in 1977 but the best sequence still works well and happens to be as science fictional as Mainwood’s Autobahn, an entire cycle of planetary evolution set to Ravel’s Bolero. Follow the links below.
• Roger Mainwood’s Autobahn pt. 1 | pt. 2
• Ravel’s Bolero from Allegro non troppo
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Sleeve craft
• Who designed Vertigo #6360 620?
• Old music and old technology
• Aerodynamik by Kraftwerk
• The genius of Kraftwerk
Ubuweb turns up another gem of abstract cinema with this 1965 work by Storm de Hirsch. The only film of hers I’d seen prior to this was Third Eye Butterfly (1968), screened at the 2005 Summer of Love psychedelia exhibition. Both these shorts share the same spilt-screen effect but Peyote Queen cuts kaleidoscopic views of the woman in question with brightly-coloured animated glyphs and shapes created by drawing directly onto the film emulsion. This is an old technique which goes back at least as far as Len Lye’s pioneering films of the 1930s. Peyote Queen‘s drum soundtrack and white dots flickering on black are very reminiscent of Lye’s brilliantly minimal Free Radicals (1958) which was also made by scratching the film.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Mary Ellen Bute: Films 1934–1957
I’d only seen one or two of Salvador Dalí’s illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland before but you can see the complete (?) set here. These date from 1969 when Dalí was well past his prime as an artist but they’re still worth a look to see how he tackled each chapter, using the skipping girl motif from earlier paintings as his Alice figure. The attraction of the Alice books for the Surrealists is no surprise; Max Ernst produced a rather enigmatic series of Alice-themed lithographs while André Breton had earlier made Alice the “Siren of Stars” in the set of Surrealist playing cards he designed in the 1940 (below). I’d imagine there are other connections I’ve missed; leave a comment if you know of any. (Thanks to Charity for the tip!)
For more Dalí, here’s something I neglected to link to a while ago, the legendary Dalí meets Disney short, Destino.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Virtual Alice
• Psychedelic Wonderland: the 2010 calendar
• Charles Robinson’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• Humpty Dumpty variations
• Alice in Wonderland by Jonathan Miller
• Dalí and Film
• The Illustrators of Alice
• Surrealist cartomancy
Two experimental films by British filmmakers. Berlin Horse (1970) at Ubuweb is a hypnotic piece of minimalism by Malcolm Le Grice who subjects found footage of exercising horses to a series of loopings and filterings that push the degraded images to a point of textured abstraction. Of note with this film is the equally minimal and repetitive score, a piano loop created by Brian Eno. This was before he gained prominence as a member of Roxy Music but the slight piece of experimentation points the way to his post-Roxy career and his ambient investigations. Berlin Horse is available on DVD from Lux, with a selection of Le Grice’s other shorts.
Marvo Movie (1967) at Europa Film Treasures is a typically frenetic work by Jeff Keen, four minutes of heavily cut-up sound and vision with collage, animation and multiple exposures throughout. Despite the year of its creation, the effect is less psychedelic and more like an amphetamine rush.