{film} – Page 170 – { feuilleton }

The pinscreen works of Alexandre Alexeieff & Claire Parker

The incredible animated films of Alexeieff & Parker have been featured here before, the last occasion being a post about their 1963 adaptation of Gogol’s The Nose. The Gogol film is included in this 38-minute YouTube compilation whose contents are as follows: A Night on Bald Mountain (1933), En passant (1943), The Nose (1963), Pictures at an Exhibition (1972), Three Moods (1980). The Nose is still the best of their films that I’ve seen to date but mention should be made of the gem that is En passant, a very brief illustration of a Canadian song. The precision of this piece never fails to astonish me: the pinscreen technique must be difficult enough without also being able to suddenly shift viewpoint—the moment when the squirrel jumps on the windmill blades!—and accurately convey the movements of a squirrel and a rooster. Watch that one if nothing else.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Nose, a film by Alexandre Alexeieff & Claire Parker
• Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker

Spheres, a film by Norman McLaren and René Jodoin

Norman McLaren’s dance films were a late development, previous decades having been spent creating animated films in a variety of techniques. Many of these were abstract works with a musical accompaniment, as is Spheres (1969), one of McLaren’s last films in this style. It’s not completely abstract: a butterfly keeps interrupting the multiplying spheres which dance through space to a piano piece by Bach. This being a Canadian production, it’s fitting that Glenn Gould is at the keyboard.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ballet Adagio, a film by Norman McLaren
• Pas de Deux by Norman McLaren
• Norman McLaren

Ballet Adagio, a film by Norman McLaren

In which Norman McLaren once more brings film technology to the world of dance. McLaren’s earlier Pas de Deux (1968) used optical printing to multiply the movements of the dancers in a manner similar to Marey’s chronophotographs; in Ballet Adagio the entire dance is shown in slow motion, a common enough technique but one you seldom see applied to ballet. The music is Albinoni’s Adagio. The latter technique was employed again in the homoerotic Narcissus (1983) which can be seen in full at the NFB website.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Lodela, a film by Philippe Baylaucq
• Pas de Deux by Norman McLaren
• Norman McLaren

Weekend links 260

Bachelor with “demons” (Sleezy) [sic] (2015) by Elijah Burgher. One of a new series of artworks by Burgher showing at Zieher Smith & Horton, NYC.

• The week in HR Giger: Belinda Sallin on her documentary, Dark Star: HR Giger’s World; Ron Kretsch on the unseen cinema of HR Giger; Matthew Cheney thinks the Gigeresque has become too familiar. I can see his point but originality is always in short supply; asking for something new means setting yourself up for a long wait.

• Pwdre ser, or Star jelly, is “a pale, foul-smelling jelly traditionally associated with meteorite falls”. The Rot of the Stars at the ICA, London, is an audio-visual art collaboration between Jo Fisher and Mark Pilkington dealing with the mysterious substance.

• Mixes of the week: A Tri Angle Records birthday DJ set by Björk; OreCast 196 mix by Ilius; Secret Thirteen Mix 153 by M!R!M.

To assume that a given group of people would be similar because of birthdate, Ryder thought, was to risk committing a fallacy. “The burden of proof is on those who insist that the cohort acquires the organised characteristics of some kind of temporal community,” he wrote. “This may be a fruitful hypothesis in the study of small groups of coevals in artistic or political movements but it scarcely applies to more than a small minority of the cohort in a mass society.”

Generational thinking is a bogus way to understand the world says Rebecca Onion

• The plan for an airport above the streets of Manhattan. Related: Charles Glover‘s similar plan for London.

• Errol Morris on how typography shapes our perception of truth.

• Michael Moorcock enjoyed The Vorrh, a novel by Brian Catling.

• Clive Barker on almost dying, hustling, and killing Pinhead.

• A new Penguin Books website for Angela Carter.

• Callum James on artist Philip Core.

• A Beginner’s Guide to King Tubby

• King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (1976) by Augustus Pablo | Star Cannibal (1982) by Hawkwind | Sleazy (1983) by Jah Wobble, The Edge, Holger Czukay

Eurydice…She, So Beloved, a film by the Brothers Quay

Another recent short from the Quays that’s yet to be given a wider release, Eurydice…She, So Beloved (2007) is an opera/dance piece subtitled “Film ballet in homage to the 100th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo“. Orfeo (Simon Keenlyside) sings an aria while Hermes (Kenneth Tharp) rouses Eurydice (Zenaida Yanowsky) from her sleep in a suitably Stygian and rather industrial Underworld. Watch it here.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Quay Brothers archive