Alex Ramon – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 852

Heaviness of Sleep (1938) by John Armstrong.

• Suntup Editions are reprinting two stories by Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan and The White People will be presented together in a single volume, with corrected texts printed in letterpress. The book will also feature eight tipped-in lithographs by Flora McLachlan, and an afterword by Henry Wessells.

• “While it mines much of the same material found throughout the horror genre, The Shout belongs to a parallel cinematic lineage—more art-house than grindhouse.” Leo Goldsmith on Jerzy Skolimowski’s film adaptation of the short story by Robert Graves.

• The week in Borges: “I seeded my dreams and this story emerged”: Poet Will Dowd let Jorge Luis Borges speak to him in his sleep. And Nick James reviews Life of Jorge Luis Borges, a 323-minute documentary directed by Mariano Llínas.

• At Smithsonian Magazine: “Venetian artist Canaletto merged fantasy and architectural detail in this previously unseen sketch”.

• Devil in the detail: 100 years on, FW Murnau’s Faust scrapbook reveals the secrets of his silent masterpiece.

• At Public Domain Review: Rudolf Kalvach’s Wiener Werkstätte postcards (1907).

• At the BFI: Alex Ramon chooses 10 great black-and-white films of the 2020s.

• At Colossal: Winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2026.

• Mix of the week: A Samhain Mixtape at The Invisible College.

• New music: Sleep Machines by O Yuki Conjugate.

• Kali Malone’s favourite albums.

• ∞ Infinite Jungle

• Ordinary Sleep (1994) by Jessamine | First Sleep (2002) by Cliff Martinez | Black Sleep Part I (2008) by Jasper TX

Weekend links 842

An illustration by Charles Keeping for The Golden Shadow.

• At the BFI: Alex Ramon selects 10 great British TV shows of 1976. (And 50 years ago the American term “shows” was most often applied to the variety format. We would have called these “programmes”.)

• Illustrations by Charles Keeping for The Golden Shadow (1973), a retelling of Greek myths and legends by Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen.

• All The Devils are here: Ken Russell’s controversial masterpiece will return to cinemas in its restored, definitive form in October.

• The Strange World of…The Cramps. Related: The Cramps on The Tube 1986, full 20-minute performance unedited.

• New music: Olùsìn (Worshippers) by Ibukun Sunday; The Will of Tongues by Sarah Davachi.

• In a previously unavailable performance, Can play Halleluhwah on Beat-Club in 1971.

• The first Polish Culture UK Podcast is an introduction to Żuławski’s cinema.

• Mix of the week is DreamScenes – August 2026 at Ambientblog.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Zinkraft.

• The Geologic Atlas of the Moon.

• Xerox Hell

• Golden Hair (1970) by Syd Barrett | The Golden Vibe (Alternative Mix) (1977) by Steve Hillage | Golden Ball (1993) by Stereolab

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