{"id":12780,"date":"2012-12-18T02:49:43","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T02:49:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=12780"},"modified":"2015-01-14T07:05:59","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T06:05:59","slug":"chronopolis-by-piotr-kamler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/12\/18\/chronopolis-by-piotr-kamler\/","title":{"rendered":"Chronopolis by Piotr Kamler"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"chronopolis3.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/chronopolis3.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Another gem at Ubuweb, and nothing to do with JG Ballard&#8217;s SF story of the same name, Piotr Kamler&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/ubu.com\/film\/kamler_chronopolis.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Chronopolis<\/em><\/a> (1983) is a 50-minute animated science fiction film, albeit\u00a0science fiction of a much more abstract variety than one usually finds in cinema. I&#8217;m generally exasperated by the way film and TV SF does little more than play Cowboys &amp; Indians in space so it&#8217;s refreshing to see something that&#8217;s unashamedly strange and doesn&#8217;t feel the need to explain itself. There is apparently a version of this with some English narration for those benighted American audiences everyone feels a need to pander to but the Ubuweb version is wordless, and if you can&#8217;t read French then you won&#8217;t understand the few lines of text prologue at the opening.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"chronopolis1.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/chronopolis1.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Accompanying Kamler&#8217;s beautifully crafted and quite inexplicable scenes there&#8217;s an electronic score by composer Luc Ferrari, mostly analogue timbres whose origin is as mysterious as the events taking place on-screen. Kamler&#8217;s statuesque figures remind me of the gods and aliens that Moebius and co. were drawing in\u00a0<em><em>M\u00e9tal Hurlant<\/em><\/em> during the 1970s. <em>Chronopolis<\/em> was a French production begun in 1977 so it&#8217;s possible that French comics were an influence. Moebius himself worked on another animated SF film during this period, Ren\u00e9 Laloux&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0084315\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Time Masters<\/em><\/a> (1982). <em>Chronopolis<\/em> is closer in tone to the weirdness of Laloux&#8217;s earlier <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0070544\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Fantastic Planet<\/em><\/a> (1973), and all the better for it.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"chronopolis2.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/chronopolis2.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Previously on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/09\/20\/les-jeux-des-anges-by-walerian-borowczyk\/\">Les Jeux des Anges by Walerian Borowczyk<\/a><br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2011\/08\/02\/les-temps-morts-by-rene-laloux\/\">Les Temps Morts by Ren\u00e9 Laloux<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another gem at Ubuweb, and nothing to do with JG Ballard&#8217;s SF story of the same name, Piotr Kamler&#8217;s Chronopolis (1983) is a 50-minute animated science fiction film, albeit\u00a0science fiction of a much more abstract variety than one usually finds in cinema. I&#8217;m generally exasperated by the way film and TV SF does little more &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/12\/18\/chronopolis-by-piotr-kamler\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Chronopolis by Piotr Kamler&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,9,7,20],"tags":[3450,137,4404,4618,4403,895,119],"class_list":["post-12780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animation","category-comics","category-film","category-science-fiction","tag-jean-giraud-moebius","tag-jg-ballard","tag-luc-ferrari","tag-metal-hurlant","tag-piotr-kamler","tag-rene-laloux","tag-ubuweb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-3k8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}