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Short films by Sergei Parajanov

Hakob Hovnatanyan (1967).

I’ve been enthusing for years about the unique films of Sergei Parajanov (1924–1990), usually in vain since his work hasn’t always been easy to see and is (for now) poorly served by DVD. His two masterworks, Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1964) and The Colour of Pomegranates (1968), have both been issued on disc but in shoddy versions with prints that are scratched and desaturated, and the latter suffers from poor subtitling. Parajanov’s films make bold use of colour and a washed-out print does him no favours at all. In an ideal world the BFI or Criterion would give these films the attention they deserve.

Grumbles aside, Ubuweb comes up trumps again by posting three of Parajanov’s shorter works, none of which I’d seen before. These give some idea of his distinctive tableaux style, and his recurrent preoccupation with decorative details and close views of objects.

• Parajanov.com

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Disasters of War

The first action heroine

The first action heroine | Ellen Ripley and Alien, 30 years on.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune

Fortunate Londoners can get to see a new exhibition, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘Dune’: An exhibition of a film of a book that never was, which runs at The Drawing Room until October 25, 2009. As well as production designs from concept artists Moebius, HR Giger and Chris Foss, there’s newly commissioned work by artists Steven Claydon, Matthew Day Jackson and Vidya Gastaldon.

Jodorowsky’s proposed 1976 adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel is now the stuff of legend, and it’s possible that his outrageously ambitious plans are more fun to dream about than they would have been on the screen. But it remains a tantalising prospect that Jodorowsky might well have pulled off a science fiction equivalent of Fellini’s Satyricon. Either way, along with Stanley Kubrick’s unmade Napoleon, it’s one of the great lost films of the 1970s.

Among Jodorowsky’s proposed cast were Orson Welles, Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali, the last of whom was to play the Emperor of the Universe, who ruled from a golden toilet-cum-throne in the shape of two intertwined dolphins. Unable to secure the money from Hollywood to create the ‘Dune’ of his imagination, Jodorowsky abandoned the film before a single frame was shot. All that survives of this project is Jodorowsky’s extensive notes, and the production drawings of Moebius, Giger and Foss. These reveal a potential future for sci-fi movie making that eschewed the conservative, technology-based approach of American filmmakers in favour of something closer to a metaphysical fever-dream.

left: Emperor Shaddam IV; right: Feyd Rautha.

Moebius’s designs are wildly different from those used in David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation (which I like nonetheless). His sketch of the Emperor on the left gives some idea of how Salvador Dalí might have appeared in the film, while the figure on the right is Baron Harkonnen’s effete nephew, Feyd, a far more radical conception than the grinning fool played by Sting in the Lynch version. There’s a lot more of Moebius’s sketches at the excellent Dune.info site.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Dalí and Film
• Jodorowsky on DVD

Mirror, mirror

Mirror, mirror | Simon Callow on The Picture of Dorian Gray.

David Lynch window displays

Two of the stunning displays created from sketches by David Lynch for the Galeries Lafayette department store, Paris. The series is entitled Machine-Abstraction-Women, and I don’t think Mr Lynch would mind too much having his description of the works translated in an extruded manner from French to English:

I was always fascinated by the spectacle of the women in front of the windows of the department stores. By designing the fronts of the Lafayette Galleries, I wanted to show all the identities which coexist at the woman of the 21st century. With the reflection of glass which returns the floutée image of the passers by, this set of parallel universes approaches my films, where the same actress interprets several characters. I drew very abstract decorations. Landscapes cubists populated of sculptures, wheels, pieces of furniture, of vidéos, sounds. I see these windows like a labyrinth, a street museum where to move through indices. A window, it is a transparent door on the unknown. (More.)

Much as I like Lynch’s films, I’ve never been very taken with his paintings, they always seem to lack the powerful quality he achieves in other media. But I like these a great deal and it’s a shame this is a one-off commission for a store. He’s also produced an attendant series of lithograph works, I See Myself.

• David Lynch aux Galeries
• David Lynch en vitrine

Previously on { feuilleton }
• David Lynch in Paris
• Inland Empire