Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

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NABOB OF NOWHERE
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#151 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Fri Jun 17, 2011 1:50 am

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BAUHAUS DESAU
COMPILATION, EDITION BAUHAUS - MEDIEN-KUNST / MEDIA ART
"Edition Bauhaus: Media Art. PAL DVD. The DVD features media art and animation films planned or produced in the 1920s at the Bauhaus school. Some of these experiments were never realized, others were not filmed at the time they were performed. In the 1960s and 1970s, some of the artists began to recreate their ideas. The DVD "Medien-Art" brings together the most important of these reconstructions. Werner Graeff, student at the Bauhaus in 1922, published the same year two scores for abstract films that he only realised in 1958/59 and 1977: KOMPOSITION I/1922 and KOMPOSITION II/1922. lso in 1922, Bauhaus student Kurt Schwerdtfeger developed his REFLEKTORISCHE LICHTSPIELE. fter the war, he reconstructed his scores and staged them together with students. [NOTE: only a partial version, 17 minutes, of the resconstruction film is included here]. Heinrich Brocksieper, a Bauhaus student from 1919 on, turned to photography in the late 1920s and shot some abstract animation home movies. Most of them were destroyed during the war, only three fascinating fragments ­ FLÄCHEN, PERPELLERISTISCH; ENTE and NÄHERIN ­ survived. Kurt Kranz studied at the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933. In 1972, he filmed some of his paintings and concepts for animation films: ZWANZIG BILDER AUS DEM LEBEN EINER KOMPOSITION, SCHWARZ:WEISS / WEISS:SCHWARZ, DER HEROISCHE PFEIL, LEPORELLO ­ ENTWURF FÜR EINEN FARBFILM and VARIATIONEN ÜBER EIN GEOMETRISCHES THEMA. As a bonus, the DVD brings early films by Hans Richter (RHYTHMUS 21, RHYTHMUS 23) as well as Eggeling's SYMPHONIE DIAGONALE ­ obviously by mistake, this film is presented here, without an explanation, in a cut-down version of 2 minutes only, made by Hans Richter in the early 1950s. The main advantage of the DVD is the discovery of the abstract animation films of Brocksieper and the bundling of reconstructions of media art and animation. --Film Historian Jean-Paul Goergen. Includes booklet, in German. PAL. Approx 76 mins. Image from Kranz's 'Project for an abstract color film,' 1930."
Bestnr450
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denti alligator
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#152 Post by denti alligator » Thu Aug 25, 2011 7:34 pm

Anyone have anything to say about this Bill Morrison film.

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zedz
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#153 Post by zedz » Wed Aug 31, 2011 4:08 pm

(Cross-posting from the BFI subforum)

I just watched the recent Flipside release of Requiem for a Village and made a wonderful discovery in the form of David Gladwell's 1964 An Untitled Film.

It's an incredibly great experimental film, predicated on virtuoso slow motion effects and a superb electronic score by the memorably named Ernest Berk (possibly the most appropriate name ever for an experimental composer!), and its nine minutes fully justified my purchase - a cascade of unforgettable images. I expect this film will appear on my 60s list next time around. As a bonus, it boasts an absolutely stunning HD transfer, direct from the original 35mm camera negative (and it shows).

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MichaelB
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#154 Post by MichaelB » Wed Aug 31, 2011 5:51 pm

a superb electronic score by the memorably named Ernest Berk (possibly the most appropriate name ever for an experimental composer!)
I know it's bad and wrong to mock people's names and I apologise most sincerely, but that really did make me laugh out loud.

And I fully second the recommendation for An Untitled Film - if nothing else, it's black-and-white 1080p demonstration material.

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zedz
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#155 Post by zedz » Wed Aug 31, 2011 8:07 pm

Yes, the evidence is really piling up that good black-and-white transfers are the real stunners on BluRay, and this film is seriously one of the best B&W transfers I've ever seen. Definitely demo material.

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antnield
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#156 Post by antnield » Sun Sep 04, 2011 3:11 pm

denti alligator wrote:Anyone have anything to say about this Bill Morrison film.
The Digital Fix

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#157 Post by matrixschmatrix » Sun Dec 04, 2011 12:19 am

I emailed the Center for Visual Music about the possibility of a second volume of Fischinger films, and this was the response I got:
Well, a lot...we are working on DVD #2 now though, trying to raise enough $ to finish and release in 2012. We still need to preserve Muratti Greift Ein, though we may have half of the funding for that coming in, tentative. And looks like we have funding for Study nr 5. We're in the middle of preserving a few other titles for it; and the extra bonus features are preserved but not digitized.

Then we need a few thousand for HD transfers & audio, and a few thousand for design/packaging/authoring and replication.

We have a funding project set up, where people can donate either towards their favorite film, or digitization or the next DVD project...
So, nothing in stone, but I'd say this is pretty exciting news nonetheless.

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antnield
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#158 Post by antnield » Sun Dec 11, 2011 10:42 am

This one's been out for a few months, but I've only just gotten around to watching it...

Lux's Jo Ann Kaplan set, Body of Work contains four of her short films and her hour-long documentary Invocation: Maya Deren which screened on Channel 4 back in 1988. The documentary alone justifies a purchase: a personal and analytical take on Deren and her body of work with contributions from Jonas Mekas, Amos Vogel, Stan Brakhage and others. (Helen Mirren narrates.) There's also plenty of enticing clips, not only of Deren's famed works but also the later, comparatively minor films and the unfinished projects. Kaplan's own films are an intriguing mixture of animation, dance and VALIE EXPORT-isms, but the doc is the key work here.

(I've linked to the Lux site, but the disc can also be purchased through MovieMail.)

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rockysds
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#159 Post by rockysds » Sun Apr 01, 2012 11:38 am

Microcinema is releasing a three-disc dvd collection of Rudy Burckhardt's films April 24th.

This just shot up alongside the Frampton and Epstein sets as one of my most anticipated releases of the year.

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rockysds
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#160 Post by rockysds » Wed Jun 06, 2012 2:59 pm

Re-voir recently upgraded their release of Rameau's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen, so there's a dvd now! Still priced at 69 euro, but it does contain two discs and a book.

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rockysds
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#161 Post by rockysds » Sat Jun 09, 2012 11:06 am

There's a dvd box release of three films by Ken Jacobs: "RAZZLE DAZZLE The Lost World", "Return to the Scene of the Crime" and "Anaglyph Tom (Tom with Puffy Cheeks)" available through Electronic Arts Intermix priced at $75. I haven't found any reviews of the discs and I'm curious if anyone on the board has purchased the set/has thoughts on it.

Adam
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#162 Post by Adam » Sat Jun 09, 2012 7:23 pm

It's a 3-D set - Razzle Dazzle & Anaglyph Tom, both of which we've screened at Filmforum, are anaglyph 3-D. Haven't seen the third one.

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Gregory
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#163 Post by Gregory » Sun Jul 15, 2012 2:33 pm

rockysds wrote:Microcinema is releasing a three-disc dvd collection of Rudy Burckhardt's films April 24th. This just shot up alongside the Frampton and Epstein sets as one of my most anticipated releases of the year.
I just received this set and was a little sad to see that it's 3 DVD-Rs. I did notice that the retail price of this one is only $50, compared to $60 for their 3-disc Joel Schlemowitz set (on pressed discs) from a few years back.
The transfers look about what I'd expected so far. The prevalence of digital artifacts, compression flaws, and haloing is distracting at times, but most of the time the transfers seem serviceable, especially on smaller displays. It's nice just to have these available to watch at home for the first time. There are sides to Burckhardt I'd never seen here. In his more familiar modes, his views of city life are by turns beautiful, wistful, funny, dramatic, frightening, and a lot more.
It would have been great if they could have included the little-seen documentary on Burckhardt, Not Nude Though.

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htshell
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#164 Post by htshell » Thu Jul 19, 2012 5:33 pm

Image
Following rampant Internet speculation, Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film has received official confirmation and lots more detailed information regarding the films of Jonas Mekas that will be released on DVD in 2012.

Mekas’ films will indeed be released by a trio of Paris-based organizations — fashion icon agnes b., DVD distributor Potemkine and avant-garde film distributor Re:Voir — and are scheduled to come out in November. A box set collection, pictured above, will only contain a selection of Mekas films: Lost, Lost, Lost; The Brig; Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania; Walden; As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty; and a DVD of Mekas’ shorter films.

However, the DVDs will also be sold separately and several other films will also be made available through Re:Voir, including Guns of the Trees, Mekas’ first film.

Most exciting, though, is that all the DVDs will be released as Region 0, meaning that they will be playable on devices all over the world.

To coincide with this momentous release of the films of arguably the most significant figure in underground film history, there are several retrospectives and an exhibition being planned as well. In November, there will be a Mekas retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, followed in December by an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London and a retrospective at the British Film Institute (BFI).

Stay tuned for even more details in the coming weeks! And special thanks to Mekas’ son Sebastian for providing Bad Lit with this information.
http://www.badlit.com/?p=23565" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Gregory
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#165 Post by Gregory » Thu Jul 19, 2012 6:20 pm

Great. I hadn't heard that was coming and just a few days ago purchased an expensive copy of Walden. I expect the box will be the most economical way to get all the rest. Anyway, it'll be great to see the rest (again). I found Lost, Lost, Lost and Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania wonderful and moving, for example.

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SpiderBaby
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#166 Post by SpiderBaby » Thu Jul 19, 2012 8:44 pm

Can't wait for this. Thanks for the news.

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Matt
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#167 Post by Matt » Fri Jul 20, 2012 5:14 pm

Most exciting, though, is that all the DVDs will be released as Region 0, meaning that they will be playable on devices all over the world.
Except not because they will most likely be PAL and unplayable on most players sold in the US. But still, great news.

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zedz
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#168 Post by zedz » Sun Jul 22, 2012 7:40 pm

Re:Voir's release of Walden is essential. I hope they'll be retaining the massive book. The Brig is also already available, but I'll be happy to double dip on those if the box option is economical.

onedimension
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#169 Post by onedimension » Sun Jul 22, 2012 10:51 pm

Anyone familiar with the works of Lawrence Jordan or James Broughton? Amazon's offering a 2-pack of FACETS releases.. I haven't seen them mentioned on this thread before.

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Gregory
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#170 Post by Gregory » Mon Jul 23, 2012 11:29 am

They've been talked about a little in other threads, such as this one (Jordan set discussed in that link), which is an earlier thread on "avant-garde/experimental" that has long run concurrently with this one.
Anyway, I've never enjoyed Broughton that much, myself. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from checking out that set but I'd recommend sampling his work through the films of his included on Kino's Avant-Garde 2 and 3 sets (which everyone who doesn't have should probably be picking up soon due to rumors of them going OOP).
I love Larry Jordan's work but was disappointed in how it was presented in the Facets set. From what I know of some of Jordan's compositions, the transfers seemed highly cropped/zoomed-in, not to mention rife with artifacts from compression or bad conversions or who knows what. The films still look decent and it'll probably be the only chance to have them, so I still recommend the set if it can be found discounted.
On that score, ImportCDs.com has a much better price on the 2-pack (and on either set by itself) than Amazon.

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zedz
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#171 Post by zedz » Tue Jul 24, 2012 4:39 pm

They're both great sets, even though neither Broughton nor Jordan are among my favourite experimental filmmakers. Major retrospective sets like this are rare as hen's teeth, and probably getting rarer, so they're well worth supporting, and chances are there will be a handful of films on each that you'll like, plus lots that will provide context for the work of experimental filmmakers of the period in general.

With the Broughton set, for example, I think there's only one film on there that I absolutely love (Devotions), but it was great for providing a survey of the times and tides of American experimental filmmaking from the surrealistic sketches and psychodramas of the 40s and 50s to the more personal and idiosyncratic explorations of the 70s and 80s, with Broughton bouncing off the various filmmaking trends he passed through or passed by. It's also a fascinating survey of social attitudes in general, with Broughton using his films to explore and express his own sexuality, and obviously the ways he could do that changed radically over four decades.

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Alan Smithee
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#172 Post by Alan Smithee » Wed Aug 22, 2012 9:43 am

Can anyone recommend some great living critics who cover experimental film? Worldwide for sure but New York based especially.

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knives
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#173 Post by knives » Wed Aug 22, 2012 2:39 pm

I would imagine Mekas still gets some writing in.

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AlexHansen
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#174 Post by AlexHansen » Wed Aug 22, 2012 3:11 pm

Not NY based but Michael Sicinski is as good as there is.

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Alan Smithee
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Re: Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films on DVD

#175 Post by Alan Smithee » Wed Aug 22, 2012 4:50 pm

AlexHansen wrote:Not NY based but Michael Sicinski is as good as there is.
Cool this is new to me, thanks!
knives wrote:I would imagine Mekas still gets some writing in.
I follow Mekas on Facebook, if he does he doesn't post it. He seems to be pushing his own work in his twilight years.

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