Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films

[planetjake]

The film-world has suffered a great loss...

[Gregory]

Very sad. Coincidentally, I had been watching his A Movie just the day before. This year is the film's 50th anniversary, by the way, and it would be a nice tribute if it saw some kind of special release following this news.
I've found his films not only insightful and inspired but consistently captivating and a joy to watch. He was a gleaner of the highest order.

[Cash Flagg]

Are any of Bruce Conner's films available on DVD? I've only come across the (rather pricey) Crossroads/ Looking for Mushrooms set.

[Gregory]

Are any of Bruce Conner's films available on DVD? I've only come across the (rather pricey) Crossroads/ Looking for Mushrooms set.

While I can't promise anything, I believe there is a very good chance that some of his work will appear on the next Treasures From America's Films Archives set coming next year. America is Waiting, Cosmic Ray, Mea Culpa, Report, and Ten Second Film would be the contenders.
I heard that Conner withdrew the actual films from circulation a few years back or so but I'm not sure why. Nor do I know whether his death will end up helping or hurting any chance there is of his films -- the ones I named above, or others -- to be released on DVD. There is also a chance that whoever now hold the rights to the films will eventually plan further releases through the Michael Kohn gallery, which handled his work, but it's probably way too soon for us to start thinking about that.

[ptmd]

Are any of Bruce Conner's films available on DVD? I've only come across the (rather pricey) Crossroads/ Looking for Mushrooms set.

The reasons Conner withdrew his films from circulation at co-ops like Canyon Cinema remain a bit mysterious but I think it was a combination of rights issues surrounding the music and an attempt to do some sort of re-release through the gallery. I have no idea what the status of all of that is now, but I know that, at the moment, his films still cannot be rented through the usual channels (a couple venues have tried to organize Conner retros without success). You can, however, see many of them regularly as part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema series and if anyone is likely to mount a memorial screening event, it's Anthology. It's also possible that there will be some kind of Conner-related screening at Views from the Avant-Garde this October (part of the New York Film Festival).

As far as DVDs go, eight of Conner's very best films including his masterpiece Report (1965), were released on a DVD called 2002 BC via the Michael Kohn Gallery. This was later followed up by the Crossroads/Looking for Mushrooms disc. The 2002 BC disc is long out-of-print, but you should be able to get a copy via interlibrary loan through your local library.

[Gregory]

...you should be able to get a copy via interlibrary loan through your local library.

I believe only a few libraries in the country have this DVD, and in my experience most libraries will not loan out video materials (especially those that cannot be replaced), but it could be worth a try.
I was fortunate to have bought a copy of 2002 B.C. while it was on offer, but I procrastinated with Looking For Mushrooms/Crossroads and have been kicking myself ever since -- both amazing films.

[planetjake]

This is my 100th post (about time!).

It's funny to read what I've written in the past. I disagree with myself so strongly. The last two years of my life have been truly transformative. When I first registered at this forum I claimed The Empire Strikes Back was the greatest piece of film art ever made. Now I find the very idea of such ranking absurd (though Brakhage's Arabic Series and/or Snow's Central Region would be considered).

I am an 'Avant-Gardian'. I am concerned that our collective thread dedicated to an entire MODE of filmmaking is composed of less pages than this thread about a single film. Now, I understand perfectly the reason(s) for this and other such tendencies. However, I refuse to accept that these tendencies cannot be altered to equally consider the Avant-Garde.

I think what might be a fun way to try and jump-start this thread is by getting a head start on chronicling our favorite avant-garde films of the last decade. This serves a dual purpose as I intend to do actually do a best-of-decade Avant-Garde program all through 2010. Might as well get cracking now, right?

Right.

I'll start:

Stan Brakhage:
Lovesong
Persian Series
Chinese Series

Ken Jacobs:
Two Wrenching Departures
Ontic Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy, bye Molly
Capitalism: Child Labor
The Surging Sea of Humanity

Zack Stiglicz:
Bent

This is what's immediately come to mind...

[owheeler]

Jennifer Reeves:
Light. Work. Mood. Disorder.

[ptmd]

Those are all good films, but, limiting myself to one film per filmmaker, the best avant-garde films of the decade from my point of view are:

The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him (2000, Stan Brakhage)
Pitcher of Colored Light (2007, Robert Beavers)
The Visitation (2002, Nathaniel Dorsky)
As I Was Moving Along Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000, Jonas Mekas)

Dorsky's newest film, Winter (2008), which I've only seen a rough-cut of is even better than The Visitation and if I could count Robert Beavers' complete 7-hour cycle My Hand Outstretched From the Winged Distance to the Sightless Measure (completed 2002) as a single work, it would top this list. Brakhage has at least a half-dozen post-2000 masterpieces, but none of them top or even match The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him, one of his most sublime and profound photographic works. As much as I love Brakhage's late hand-painted work, it's the photographic work that demonstrates his extraordinary visual intelligence most acutely (the 1989-1990 Visions in Meditation series is my favorite Brakhage work, and since I love almost everything, that's saying quite a bit).

Of course, the avant-garde work that towers over everything right now is Markopoulos' Eniaios (the 80-hour reworking of his entire corpus) and the two Temenos screenings in 2004 and 2008 are the cinematic events of the decade for me.

[Adam]

As far as DVDs go, eight of Conner's very best films including his masterpiece Report (1965), were released on a DVD called 2002 BC via the Michael Kohn Gallery. This was later followed up by the Crossroads/Looking for Mushrooms disc. The 2002 BC disc is long out-of-print, but you should be able to get a copy via interlibrary loan through your local library.

I bought both of those DVDs when they came out. Now very prized.
I run Los Angeles Filmforum so am trying to have retrospective screening, but can't yet due to the films being out of circulation.

Conner's stated reason for pulling the films from circulation last year from Canyon Cinema (who were the ones that rented them, although a variety of places, from MOMA to Cal Arts to Arsenal in Berlin, have prints for in-house screenings) was his concern over what would happen to the prints if Canyon went under. I thought it was about the music rights, but Dominic at Canyon & others told me it was mostly about his concern that if Canyon folded quickly, how could filmmakers be sure to get their prints back, get any remaining rental - in other words, that Canyon didn't have a plan in place for going-out-of-business. Of course, Conner's films were 10% or more of Canyon's business, and by pulling them, he made it more likely that Canyon would go under (and this despite the fact that Conner was on the board!). Now Dominic Angerame at Canyon is negotiating with Conner's widow to see about getting the films back into circulation.

Anyway, I'm sure that Anthology will have a Conner show, and MOMA is having one soon with Scott MacDonald. And I'll have one in Los Angeles at some point, when I can get prints again. I don't think I would do anything so rotten as to screen the DVDs that I have from the gallery.

Reply soon about experimental films from the last decade. But you can see some of what I've liked by seeing what I've programmed here and here.

[zedz]

I think what might be a fun way to try and jump-start this thread is by getting a head start on chronicling our favorite avant-garde films of the last decade. This serves a dual purpose as I intend to do actually do a best-of-decade Avant-Garde program all through 2010. Might as well get cracking now, right?

I'm with you in spirit, but just listing titles, particularly in the area of avant-garde film where useful information about specific films is scarce, is less likely to spark discussion than a brief outline of content and a personal response to them.

I recently saw and was impressed by a programme of films by Ben Rivers and Ben Russell. Highlights were:

Black & White Trypps #4 (Russell, 2008) - Heavily altered footage from a Richard Pryor concert film. The first section is bleached almost into oblivion, so the image only emerges sporadically, ghost-like, from the whiteness; the second takes the same footage, brutally overcontrasted and mirrored down the middle and strobed, to create an extremely confrontational (epileptics beware!), visceral, visual experience (a kaleidoscopic and psychedelic assault like Matsumoto's Ecstasis).

Black & White Trypps #3 (Russell, 2007) - Maybe even better: extremely intense close-up footage of a section of audience at a hardcore concert (Lightning Bolt, in Providence). The thrashing bodies are contained within the 'frame' of a a spotlight attached to the camera. The extended second section slows things to a crawl and changes the soundtrack to spacy electronica and this is where the beauty and strangeness emerges, aestheticising and intensifying an already intense event. The glacial, flattened-perspective grimaces, all piled on top of one another, start to resemble a barely animated version of Bosch's Christ Carrying the Cross.

Ah, Liberty! (Rivers, 2008) - Somewhat similar to Rivers' earlier This Is My Land (2006), a mysterious quasi-narrative seemingly located in a rural mountain landscape abandoned by civilisation. The post-apocalyptic air is enhanced when a gang fo feral kids invade the setting. This Is My Land seemed to consciously nod to Dog Star Man, with its mountain man protagonist, but Terayama's Emperor Tomato Ketchup seems to be a more relevant antecedent here.

[Adam]

I'm also a fan of B&W trypps #3 - showed it at Filmforum last year. It didn't work for me when I first viewed it on a screener, but on a big screen, completely absorbing. Try to see it projected.

Haven't seen #4 yet.

I also really like Ken Jacobs's recent work, finding video methods that create a 3-dimensionality that parallels in some ways his Nervous System Projections, but also are rich with social commentary, using as their sources stereo photos from the late 1800s/early 1900s. "Capitalism: Child Labor" is superior; "Surging Sea of Humanity" also wonderful, but perhaps slightly lesser.

[planetjake]

Here's a wonderful blog post on Bruce Baillie I stumbled upon whilst noodling about on this fine early morn.

[Gregory]

I wanted to post something about favorite avant-garde films of the past decade, but I don't think I'll be able to put together anything comprehensive based on the sum total of what I've seen. I don't mean to give the impression of having seen an immense amount -- unfortunately, I live in a very "conservative" city and have not had the time or inclination to travel just for the purpose of seeing screenings happening elsewhere.

In the past couple of months I've watched some recent films by a few filmmakers who will remain nameless and found most of it very uneven, and in one case downright disappointing. So I'll avoid getting into a discussion of all that.
As far as favorites, then, mainly what comes to mind are all the films I've seen by Ken Jacobs and Craig Baldwin.

Another, perhaps less familiar, filmmaker I would want to give equal praise to is Lewis Klahr (especially if I can stretch the "past decade" category back to include a bit more of the 1990s). His work reminds me of Larry Jordan's work, although it is less (or at least less apparently) spiritual. Whereas Jordan uses mainly 19th century engravings, Klahr uses a lot of magazine illustrations from the 1940s and '50s. The latter's use of collage is equally dazzling and skillful, and the way they fit into the films' motifs or even story arcs reminds me of something Jordan once said about how he does not want whatever stories or ideas he has in mind when he makes the film to determine, or even influence, the meanings that others connect to the films as viewers. Nonetheless, in some works by both filmmakers' there is a clear trajectory or odyssey that the central figure or follows, but the nature of it is left somewhat obscure. He seems to share the commitment to psychodrama found in earlier films by Jordan and Brakhage. I find that something about the way he puts these images into motion gives them a kind of smoldering quality that adds a great deal to the films' often intense moods.

[gubbelsj]

As far as favorites, then, mainly what comes to mind are all the films I've seen by Ken Jacobs and Craig Baldwin.

Gregory (or anybody), I'm wondering if you've managed to view Jacobs' recent Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World, and if so, where? After the excellent release of Star Spangled to Death on dvd, I'm guessing some of his other works may also eventually become readily available on disc, and Razzle Dazzle sounds particularly fascinating - an extension of his earlier experiments with analyzation and recontextualization (to say the least - he takes a one-minute 1903 Edison film and stretches it out for over an hour and a half), such as the legendary Tom, Tom the Piper's Son. I've seen neither one, and would love to change this situation.

[Faeton]

Gregory (or anybody), I'm wondering if you've managed to view Jacobs' recent Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World, and if so, where? After the excellent release of Star Spangled to Death on dvd, I'm guessing some of his other works may also eventually become readily available on disc, and Razzle Dazzle sounds particularly fascinating - an extension of his earlier experiments with analyzation and recontextualization (to say the least - he takes a one-minute 1903 Edison film and stretches it out for over an hour and a half), such as the legendary Tom, Tom the Piper's Son. I've seen neither one, and would love to change this situation.

Tzadik, the company founded by John Zorn, has so far released two Ken Jacobs DVDs: Celestial Subway Lines/Salvaging Noise & New York Ghetto Fishmarket 1903

'Tom Tom the piper's son' is currently only available in VHS PAL format throug re:voir (who are conducting some tests on blu-ray now).

[Gregory]

I haven't been able to see Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World -- I don't think it's been shown anywhere outside of New York, but I could be mistaken. I did see the trailer, and it's clear the film is very much in the vein of New York Ghetto Fish Market 1903, which is a pretty amazing work. My understanding is that he had done a nervous system performance of the Edison film of New York Ghetto Fish Market as far back as the early '90s, and the version that appears on the Tzadik disc shows how he has incorporated digital manipulation into the earlier techniques of which Tom, Tom the Piper's Son have become a landmark. I recommend an eyeful of New York Ghetto Fishmarket 1903 on a large-ish screen in a dark room. Hard to say much more about it, as I could never hope to explain precisely how Jacobs manages to tease some kind of dormant life out of these actualities, nor to describe what emerges from viewing this stuff through Jacobs's prisms. The DVD also features a haunting score by the great Tom Cora (and a vocalist with whom I'll admit I was completely unfamiliar). Part of what makes this work is perhaps the cumulative effect of watching these images for around two hours, although for comparison there is a much shorter work, Pushcarts of Eternity Street, which can be downloaded here. It's based on another 1903 Edison short, which shows a cop on the beat prodding Manhattan produce vendors to move along.

[Adam]

We're working on screening Razzle Dazzle in Los Angeles soon.

The Tzadik releases are nice.

I'm also a big big fan of Jacobs's "Georgetown Loop" whcih reuses another 1903 film.

[Gregory]

I'm also a big big fan of Jacobs's "Georgetown Loop" whcih reuses another 1903 film.

Georgetown Loop, Razzle Dazzle, New York Ghetto Fishmarket, Pushcarts Market -- what is it about Jacobs and films from 1903?! Not that I'm complaining (although I probably couldn't watch the Edison film of the elephant being electrocuted for more than a few minutes, if Jacobs should ever take that on).

Please keep us posted on the L.A. screening of Razzle Dazzle - The Lost World.

[osmin]

A splendid DVD set for a small price. But you have to polish your Polish to order.

[sevenarts]

My review of two Bruce Conner films: A Movie and Report

[Faeton]

Given the focus of your Web site I wanted to alert you to the newest addition to the National Film Preservation Foundation’s Treasures from American Film Archives series, Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986. The 2-DVD box set is scheduled for release on March 3, 2009. We’re announcing the contents tomorrow.

Treasures IV presents works by 27 filmmakers, from Bruce Baillie to Andy Warhol, who changed cinema in the decades following World War II. The line-up reads like a who’s who of the avant-garde world and includes films by luminaries such as Stan Brakhage, Shirley Clarke, and Harry Smith as well as rediscoveries. Hollis Frampton’s (nostaglia) and Marie Menken’s Go! Go! Go! are among the films included on the set. I’ve attached the brochure and press release. An image of the set’s artwork is also available.

Treasures IV features a 70-page book of program notes introduced by Martin Scorsese and new music by John Zorn. The films were selected from the preservation work of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Anthology Film Archives, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, and the Pacific Film Archive and were expertly transferred. None has been available before in the United States on good quality DVD. Net proceeds will be split with the archives to support film preservation.

Films included:

- Bruce Baillie - Here I am (1962)
- Wallace Berman - Aleph (1956-66)
- Stan Brakahge - The riddle of lumen (1972)
- Robert Breer - Eyewash (1959)
- Shirley Clarke - Bridges-go-round (1958)
- Joseph Cornell - By night with torch and spear (1940s?)
- Storm de Hirsch - Peyote queen (1965)
- Hollis Frampton- (nostalgia) (1971)
- Larry Gottheim - Fog line (1970)
- Ken Jacobs - Little stabs at happiness (1959-63)
- Lawrence Jordan - Hamfat Asar (1965)
- George Kuchar - I, an actress (1977)
- Owen Land - New improved institutional quality: In the environmnt of liquids and nasals a parasitic vowel sometimes develops (1976)
- Standish Lawder - Necrology (1969-70)
- Saul Levine - Note to Pati (1969)
- Christopher Maclaine - The end (1953)
- Jonas Mekas - Notes on the circus (1966)
- Marie Menken - Go! Go! Go! (1962-64)
- Robert Nelson and William T.Wiley - The off-handed jape... & how to pull it off (1967)
- Pat O'Neill - 7362 (1967)
- Ron Rice - Chumlum (1964)
- Paul Sharits - Bad burns (1982)
- Jane Conger Belson Shimane - Odds & ends (1959)
- Harry Smith - Film no.3: Interwoven (1947-49)
- Chick Strand - Fake fruit factory (1986)
- Andy Warhol - Mario Banana (no.1) (1964)

[zedz]

I knew this was in the works, and I can't wait. If only this set was three or four discs like the others, but we can't afford to look a gift horse in the mouth. Given their track record, this should be of By Brakhage standard and will be the definitive entry point for American experimental filmmaking for some time to come.

[King Prendergast]

Does anyone know of any freak films which pre-date Browning's?

[Faeton]

Does anyone know of any freak films which pre-date Browning's?

I think the earliest one would be the short film "Kobelkoff" (1900)