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The Bunker of the Last Gunshots

Jean-Pierre Jeunet is known these days as a director in his own right but he started out working in collaboration with Marc Caro, a writing and directing partnership that lasted up to The City of Lost Children in 1995. Given how much I enjoyed that film, and their earlier Delicatessen (1991), I suspect it’s Caro’s sensibility I respond to. I loathed Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection so much I refuse to watch it again (for me the Alien series ends with Ripley’s swan dive at the end of the third film), and I’ve shunned Amelie and everything he’s done since.

The Bunker of the Last Gunshots (1981) is an early Caro/Jeunet work set in the same retro environment as Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, with equally eccentric or unpleasant characters and the same antiquated technology. There’s no dialogue, and the narrative is conveyed obliquely at best. Even more than their feature films this is a vehicle for conveying a mood, the concern here being less with story and more with monochrome visuals, chiaroscuro lighting and bits of grotesquery among the all-male inhabitants of a bunker from some unspecified war. For a low-budget piece it’s very assured, and if you’d seen this in 1981 you’d be expecting the pair to go on to bigger and better things. The Bunker of the Last Gunshots runs for 25 minutes; there’s a rough copy on YouTube or a better one at Vimeo.

Qualia

Qualia is a 10-minute film by Vincent Ciciliato subtitled “A remake of Salò“, a reference to Pasolini’s notorious Sadeian indictment of Italian Fascism, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Calling this a remake is something of a stretch, it’s more accurate to describe it as a mash-up of vague gestures in the direction of Pasolini’s grim tableaux via Zbigniew Rybczynski’s celebrated short film, Tango (1980). The latter is represented by the single room in which the action develops, and the jerking movements of the actors although their movements don’t attempt to match the clever dispersal of Rybczynski’s characters. We’re not exactly starved of unusual juxtapositions these days but a Salò/Tango mash-up is something I wouldn’t have expected to see. Watch it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Tango

A Book of Old English Ballads

More illustration from George Wharton Edwards (1859–1950) with a collection of ballads from 1910. These being for the American market, the emphasis is on the picturesque England of kings and queens, duelling knights, and Robin Hood. A couple of exceptions, such as The Twa Corbies, point to the darker world of the Child Ballads where love and virtue aren’t always rewarded, and unnatural death is often the order of the day. Browse A Book of Old English Ballads here or download it here.

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Bird Gods

Why, I asked myself, should certain birds have been allotted to certain gods and goddesses in the Greek and Roman mythology? Why should the eagle go with Zeus, the peacock with Hera, the dove with Venus, the swan with Apollo, the woodpecker with Ares, the owl with Pallas Athene? It could not be mere chance that so many gods and goddesses had each their attendant bird; the attribution was too regular; it was done too much on a system. What was the original meaning of it all?

Charles de Kay attempts to answer his question in Bird Gods (1898), a study of the mythological and religious import of birds through the ages. Illustrator George Wharton Edwards was an American artist who worked in the Impressionist style when painting but here deliveries a range of bird portraits embellished with bits of imitation Celtic knotwork. The interlacings of Celtic art underwent a resurgence of interest with the development of Art Nouveau. Edwards’ illustrations aren’t the best examples of this (Mucha’s Hamlet poster is much better) but they give an idea of the trend. Browse the rest of De Kay’s book here or download it here.

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Weekend links 176

This week PingMag was looking at Czech film posters. This one by Bedrich Dlouhy is for the belated 1970 release of Kurosawa’s Rashomon.

• In October Alison Goldfrapp curates an exhibition for The Lowry, Salford, featuring her favourite art. Examples will include work by Leonora Carrington, Lotte Reiniger and Henry Darger so I’ll definitely be seeing this one. The new Goldfrapp album, Tales of Us, is released this week. Alison Goldfrapp & Lisa Gunning’s film for Annabel is here.

• Michael Glover profiles artist Tom Phillips who has a new show of his paintings at the Flowers Gallery, London. The indefatigable Phillips also talked to Tracy McVeigh about his design for the new 50 pence coin which celebrates the centenary of Benjamin Britten.

• Get Carter director Mike Hodges remembers re-teaming with Michael Caine for the island-set crime thriller Pulp, and shares a letter that JG Ballard wrote to him in admiration of the film.

Dismantling the surveillance state won’t be easy. Has any country that engaged in mass surveillance of its own citizens voluntarily given up that capability? Has any mass surveillance country avoided becoming totalitarian? Whatever happens, we’re going to be breaking new ground.

Bruce Schneier on how to deal with the total surveillance state.

• Babel/Salvage presents The Midnight Channel, the newest montage of poetry by Evan J. Peterson, inspired by cinema of the horrific, fantastic and bizarre.

• Mixes of the week are from composer Amanda Feery at The Outer Church, and Pinkcourtesyphone (Richard Chartier) at Secret Thirteen.

• At Dangerous Minds: Kimberly J. Bright on the psychedelic poster art of Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. Related: LSD may not be bad for you, says study.

• Queer Zines: a 400-page study edited by AA Bronson & Philip Aarons.

• Justin Abraham Linds on The Walt Whitman of gay porn.

• Designs for theatre and print by Oskar Schlemmer.

• Beautiful Mars: a Tumblr.

• Catleidoscope!

• Goldfrapp: Lovely Head (2000) | Strict Machine (2003) | Caravan Girl (2008)