{film} – Page 18 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 772

Barbarella (1968) by Robert McGinnis. Not one of his best (see below) but the film is a cult item round here.

• At the Bureau of Lost Culture: Alan Moore on Magic, a recording of the three-way talk between Alan Moore, Gary Lachman and myself for last year’s launch of the Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic.

• At Colossal: “Daniel Martin Diaz encodes cosmic questions into geometric paintings and prints.” And is heavily influenced by Paul Laffoley by the looks of things.

• RIP Robert McGinnis, illustrator and poster artist. Related: The Artwork Of Robert McGinnis, Part 1 | The Artwork Of Robert McGinnis, Part 2.

• At Public Domain Review: “The Form of a Demon and the Heart of a Person”: Kitagawa Utamaro’s Prints of Yamauba and Kintaro (ca. 1800).

• Coming soon from Ten Acre Films: The Quatermass Experiment: The Making of TV’s First Sci-Fi Classic by Toby Hadoke.

• New music: Lost Communications by An-Ting; UPIC Diffusion Session #23 by Haswell & Hecker.

• Anti-Gravity Holiday Every Month by Robert Beatty.

• Barbarella (Extended Main Title) (1968) by Bob Crewe And The Glitterhouse | Barbarella (1991) by The 69 Eyes | My Name Is Barbarella (1992) by Barbarella

Antediluvian, a film by Mario Lanzas

This short animated film differs from many other dinosaur films in using outmoded representations of the creatures for its source rather than the more accurate depictions we have today. The first modellings of dinosaurs were crude and often very inaccurate, to a degree that the earliest renderings now have a naive charm of their own, like the hearsay depictions of African animals or Egyptian monuments.

Antediluvian has an additional attraction in its unintended resemblance to Roland Topor’s designs for René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet. Topor’s snapping, shrieking fauna are just as vicious as the outmoded saurians while being rendered in an equally naive style. All that Antediluvian requires is some suitably alien flora to push it into Topor-land, or at least the planet next door.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Les Temps Morts by René Laloux

Weekend links 771

A page by Philippe Druillet from Salammbo (1980).

• At the BFI: Alex Ramon suggests 10 great British films of 1975 (the Britishness of Barry Lyndon seems a little debatable), while Jonathan Romney talks to the Quay Brothers about their latest exhibition and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.

• At Public Domain Review: The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912), an early animated film by Wladyslaw Starewicz concerning the domestic affairs of a pair of beetles.

• Saga de Xam (previously), the science-fictional bande dessinée by Nicolas Devil and Jean Rollin, will be published in English for the first time in June.

When I first came across Ernest Berk, I assumed he was somebody’s Ursula Bogner style joke. An anti-Nazi exile turned fearless electronic pioneer, who had been a dancer in the Weimar Republic and worked both with Max Reinhardt and with Peter Zinovieff? Who nobody had ever heard of? I smelled a rat, but was wrong: Berk was very real. He was one of many dancers who fled Nazism and ended up at Dartington Hall, a school founded by wealthy hobbyists in Devon which has been slightly fancifully described as the ‘English Bauhaus’; he danced and choreographed at Glyndebourne and Covent Garden, and in the 1950s, became interested in the electronic music that was emerging out of his native Cologne. Berk gradually built a studio in Camden where he would be able to compose music for his own ballets…

Owen Hatherley on the legacy of the emigré composers who found refuge in Britain from the 1930s on

• “…distant and unrelated juxtapositions are at the very heart of Surrealism—both in France and in Japan.” Leanne Ogasawara on Surrealism in Japan.

• “What’s happening? Where are we? What about the investigation?” Mark Harris on Alan Sharp and Arthur Penn’s Night Moves.

• At Bandcamp: Dark Dreams and Bright Nightmares: Jim Allen‘s artist guide to Coil.

• At Colossal: Winners of the 2025 British Wildlife Photography Awards.

• DJ Food found more psychedelic posters from the web.

• Wildlife (1987) by Penguin Cafe Orchestra | Night Moves/Fear (1988) by Jon Hassell/Farafina | Dark Dreams (1989) by Brian Eno

Emitter: The Fluid Art Colour Machine

Roman De Giuli’s Emitter is a machine for producing and modulating paint drips whose smeared patterns are recorded with a high-definition video camera. This is another niche enthusiasm which YouTube has been encouraging of late: short videos of intense colours or patterns filmed in 4K or higher. De Giuli goes to more trouble than most when creating his vivid smears, on a technical level anyway. Beyond a certain point you have to start doing more with your colour splashes than stitching the best bits together with a house soundtrack. Looking at the YT comments reveals a horde of happy viewers so I’m evidently I’m not the ideal audience, especially when my CMYK-attuned eyes scream “Out of gamut!” whenever they encounter very intense RGB colour combinations. You can see more Emitter videos at De Giuli’s YT channel. (Via MetaFilter.)

Weekend links 770

Abstraction #51 (1965) by Virgil Finlay.

• “I think the world venerates him as this deeply religious composer who tackles eternal themes in his music, but I think it’s also good to remember that he also has a playful experimental side.” Maria Juur discussing Estonian composer Arvo Pärt in a review by Geeta Dayal of a new recording of four Pärt compositions.

• “Rubycon feels like an epic soundtrack to a great lost film…” Jeremy Allen on the 50th anniversary of a Tangerine Dream album that’s always been a favourite of mine.

• At the Internet Archive: Browse the catalogue for a forthcoming auction of rare books and artworks from The Library of Barry Humphries.

• At Public Domain Review: Through a Glass Lushly: Michalina Janoszanka’s reverse paintings (ca. 1920s).

• At Colossal: “Vintage postcard paintings by David Opdyke demonstrate an ecological future in peril“.

• At the BFI: Michael Brooke offers suggestions for ten great Slovak New Wave films.

• DJ Food unearthed four sheets of Dave Roe wrapping paper from 1968.

• New music: Doppelgänger by Ian Boddy & Harald Grosskopf.

• Ten minutes of Sun Ra and the Arkestra on French TV in 1969.

• Depictions of Atlantis in retro science fiction art.

• Old music: Flora (1987) by Hiroshi Yoshimura has been reissued.

• Atlantis (1961) by The Blue Bells | Atlantis (1969) by Donovan | Atlantis (1971) by Deuter