I promise to comment once I've actually seen more than one of the films.

The BFI had a similar (lack of) reaction to the Jeff Keen box - normally, the Beev and The Digital Fix review just about every BFI release, but they both skipped this one, leaving Blu-ray.com as the only one of the big review sites to dip a cautious toe in the water, and that's not exactly in-depth. I initially assumed that this was because the films were so startlingly different that people were just taking a long time to write their pieces, but the set has been out for well over three years now. And there are just two brief reviews on Amazon - both five-star raves, but they too don't exactly delve deeply into the set.

But I do sympathise - overtly experimental cinema is very hard to write about (which is why I find your posts so invaluable), and even more so when there's little or no critical tradition to draw on.

The Frampton set has gotten quite a few reviews in the usual places, many of them really good about approaching the work for the first time and trying to "meet it halfway." A minority are just terrible, however, such as this one and this one. It seems like some are approaching the set with the mindset of expecting to be passively entertained, similar to how they approach conventional movies, and then don't make any real effort to come to grips with what Frampton was doing, even though they're supposed to be watching these to write about them. The whole "problem" with the set is that Frampton just can't tell a story that makes sense, the films aren't accessible enough to anyone but a few art snobs, this Michael Snow guy is really bad at acting, etc. In one of these the condescension even leads to the assumption that in the early films here Frampton was trying to figure out how his camera worked. "And we've all been there, right?" What I find disappointing in what this says about how some are approaching this stuff is not that they didn't meet the challenge of understanding what the films achieve but rather that they apparently weren't interested in trying to do so in the first place and chose to tackle the set anyway. Fortunately, some viewing these films for the first time are getting good things from them.

I saw someone on Criterion's Facebook page go so far as to say that these aren't even films!

Klymkiw Film Corner:

I finally had a chance to dive into this set. You would think that this sort of thing (experimental films, largely constructed as mind puzzles or structured based on obscure mathematical concepts) would be right up my alley. And you would be completely right of course. I can kind of see now though why some have accused these films of not being films, like I noted above, as a big part of what Frampton seems to be doing here is asking what a film is, and stubbornly challenging preconceptions about what a film ought to be. (As Michael Snow reads in the great extra feature A Lecture, "it seems that a film is anything that may be put in a projector that will modulate the emerging beam of light," be it celluloid, nitrate, a cheese sandwich, etc.) One of the films on this set is a half-hour filming of the pages from a script (though granted, the film described is unfilmable, as it stars "you"). Four others are so unlike the traditional conception of film that Criterion presents them as menu screens instead. One of these is just a still shot of a tree. This (what makes something a film) is an interesting topic to dwell on I suppose, especially in the era of YouTube, but the set provokes far greater pleasures as well.

Chief among them is Zorns Lemma, the most epic exploration of the alphabet ever committed to film. (I do not make such a statement lightly.) Now, I will come clean here and admit that the mathematical principle from whence the film was named reads mostly like gibberish to me (the best I can figure is that, like ascending the steps of a family tree, everything leads to one originating element, and so the letters in the alphabet gradually lose their identity until unifying into that great originator: the film montage). But I find the film fascinating in how it uncomfortably forces you to decide whether you will process it as words or as images (try telling your mind not to read the images like words in a book--very difficult!) and in how it dares you to recall and anticipate its patterns. For a film so ordinally structured, there are still an infinite number of ways that each sequence can occur (which words are chosen, which letters are omitted, which letter will convert into an image this time, and whether the pattern will be broken or not--I'm pretty sure I noticed one sequence where the image for 'r' was shown twice). And all of this is of course not even getting into the mental associations that come from the precise juxtaposition of words chosen for this film, as well as the connotations of words given their presentation (font, environment, etc.). There are just so many ways to appreciate this film!

Moving on to the Hapax Legomena series, zedz touched well on the mental acrobatics that ensue while watching something like (nostalgia). For the sake of mathematical equivalence, I replicate his comments here, sans permutation:

I would just add that on top of all of this, there are at least a few other things going on if you are watching this for the first time, and have not already read what I am writing right now:

A) settling in to watch the film, adjusting to its defined parameters of what this film is going to be;
B) feeling the sneaking suspicion that something is off between the narration and image;
C) cursing your cheap-o Blu-ray player for ruining yet another viewing experience;
D) wondering if Criterion could have made such a glaring mistake, and if other copies might be similarly affected;
E) questioning your entire belief system/place in the universe;
F) realizing the discrepancy was intentional.

I agree it's unfortunate that the rest of Hapax Legomena was not included. The films presented here give a certain idea of what the series is about (depriving the viewer of continuity in time, visuals, or audio) but the only other part of the series that's readily available (Ordinary Matter, which can be seen here) doesn't necessarily fit into this mold. Here's hoping this set sells well enough to warrant a second volume, which will presumably include all of the remaining films except for one, just because.

Finally, the Magellan films mostly serve a whole other purpose entirely, providing eye candy that I certainly enjoy watching, but which doesn't really lend itself to much discussion. I will say I'm a little baffled that, at least going by IMDb ratings, something like Pan 700 would attract so much hate. (It's a minute-long scene, a fairly haunting image of phantom cars passing by an inconspicuous brick wall. It's a fairly obvious camera trick but effective enough--does it really offend some people's sensibilities so much?) Also, perhaps this makes me a heretic, but for films that are completely silent, I do sometimes like to try and find music that matches well. I found that this recent album by Ga'an was a perfect fit over Winter Solstice (if you're favorably disposed to Magma-esque prog). The cover art actually reminds me a lot of (nostalgia):

I thought these films might appeal to Your Mathematical Mind.

My take on "Hapax Legomena" is that the common thread is about the process of making meaning in the mind of the viewer, since the three films all present narratives that are dislocated, in different ways, from their natural context, either from temporal disjuncture ((nostalgia)), interruption (Critical Mass), or the omission of essential dimensions (Poetic Justice), while at the same time each film introduces different kinds of cognitive "white noise" that make the process of reconstruction more difficult. For me, this relates to the quality of a hapax legomenon's uncertain meaning: without the context of an entire language, its meaning is always going to be somewhat conjectural, but not indeterminate.

Again, this idea seems to apply less well to Ordinary Matter, though the (impossible) journey in that film also implies a kind of narrative, or at least a protagonist, even though there's no way to reconstruct either in real world terms. The form of the film, with all that forward motion, strongly implies purpose, but the purpose is purely speculative. Rybczynski's Oh, I Can't Stop! has a lot of fun with the same phenomenon of imputing subjectivity to a moving camera.

I suppose Ordinary Matter kind of fits in with Critical Mass in the sense that they both present everyday occurrences in a way that cannot be experienced in real life, only through manipulation by the filmmaker.

Can anyone that's seen the other parts of Hapax Legomena speak to their content and/or how they contribute to any kind of overarching theme of the entire series?

By the way, a sublime / ridiculous triple feature:
Walking from Munich to Berlin (Fischinger)
Ordinary Matter (Frampton)
Oh, I Can't Stop! (Rybczynski)

After Swo's exciting posts today I just had to crack open this set. I only had the time for the early works of which I had already seen and fallen in love with Lemon. The most immediately obvious thing for me, and I do not mean this as an insult to either party, but it seems that Frampton had a larger variety of interests in experimentation than Brakhage who I must admit can drain sometimes with a feeling of sameness. Even as themes and ideas seem to grow and mature along with technique Frampton never seems to do the same thing twice. Even the relative remake of Manuel of Arms and Maxwell's Demon shows a great many differences that I found interesting.

The most obvious connections here are the Lumieres and Deren, but I found that at least as much there is a relation here to McLaren with the teasing of form. Process Red pops and skewdops like Mosaic or the similar exercise while Surface Tension deals with the perception of movement with regards to time much like Pas de deux. It's in this last aspect I was first intrigued by Frampton and must admit I still very much am. Sticking with Surface Tension which is the best of the early films easily having the sound be in 'real' real time while the film's real time is far faster takes me away (I'm sorry for not speaking as intelligently as these films deserve). The sound is as obscured as the image due to the language. I don't want to add anything political to the film since I think it is primarily about rediscovery, but I'm reminded of Lenin's comments on the universal nature of film due to the image and how language obscures. The whole film is obscure of course, but Frampton must destroy and mutate the image to accomplish that and even in the sped up first act and the intertitle filled third the image doesn't really become obscure, just its purpose. You just have to not speak German to miss out on the sound though (this becomes even more extreme in the next film Carrots & Peas). A language as close to German as English still makes gibberish of the sound which must become as any musician knows tones and moods. So if something as obscure as sound contains a great deal of power than the moving image which is as familiar and universal as anything can be should develop too much power to the point of danger.

What I really get from Frampton (and he seems to disagree in a way based on the booklet) is that he is going back to 1899 and running full speed to the present day to really capture how each part of the cinema complicates and makes more obscure the whole. In its simplest form it may be no different from a still image. Broken to its most basic element Carrots & Peas is really just this and is there anything more simple? But then you get the sound which complicates things either by giving the illusion of a narrative or giving it the appearance of a higher purpose. The film becomes a comedy as a result because the whole of the sound is gibberish and the few mutations of the image likewise is gibberish. It is still ultimately Carrots & Peas. There is no movement, no meaning or need for time, and no esoteric purpose. it just is what we get which I suppose is a real nasty joke, but I love it for doing that.

Also here's a complete filmography with a few films posted not in the set.

Many thanks to zedz and swo for their posts. I had been holding off on really jumping into the set (only watched a few of the early films thus far) until after I'd read some more of Frampton's writings, but the interview with him in the first volume of MacDonald's Critical Cinema has been the best primer I could have asked for, and fits along with what zedz and swo have mentioned. I can't recommend it enough to anyone who's found themselves befuddled or left cold by what they're seeing.

Just to prove it's not all just mathematical I finally sat down with Zorns Lemma today and I found it to be totally interesting if just on a semantic level. The film seems to be at least in part about how we learn with the three act structure as a coy hint of that. It beautifully shows a death of language for which the concept was only ever born. A R may represent an R, but it could also represent something entirely else making what I'm typing right now amount to fsidfushuf. I was also intensely reminded of John Nash's comments on the mathematical community's stuckness and inherent lack of movement in regards ton symbols. I forget all of the details, but basically he said that π is just a symbol. We say it equals this number, but it really doesn't and we just use it as a shorthand. So even in this film the random images that we use for shorthands of language aren't really the same thing and they change and evolve so that they are inherently different from what we first saw. The orange that is being peeled that first time we see it is ever so slightly different from the next time and so on. Familiarity with an older symbol is all that makes this symbol have any meaning and by themselves they have no purpose. Show π to somebody who has never seen the symbol or similar symbols before and they will not see it as a symbol at all, but rather just what it is: π.

Of course after that I remember what this one theoretician (who's name escapes me at the moment) has to say about symbols inherent meaning to people with the test being that he'd show a nonsense symbol to people and they'd have to guess at what sort of emotion is related to that symbol. Most people agreed on what emotions related to what symbols so maybe even when torn apart from the meaning we give these symbols they'll still be representative of those symbols. Like perhaps there's some unconscious element to the beads being put on in relation to its letter that takes away from the supposed randomness of the whole endeavor? As far as I understand Lemma as a concept does that mean the film is doomed to failure no matter what? when looking at his 24 pieces of footage did he have no choice but to put the beans falling with the letter he did as that is the unconscious connection?

I've just started trawling through the set, and it's superb stuff - and Criterion seem to have done him proud.

I watched part of Zorns Lemma on YouTube when deciding whether or not to shell out for the disc, and it's like night and day compared with the Blu-ray - the difference is even more pronounced than that between the YouTube version of Jeff Keen's Marvo Movie and the BFI Blu-ray, because at least the YouTube version originated from the same digital master so didn't have the same horrible tape rolls and colour fading. Also, because the YouTube version is broken up into several parts you can't watch it in one go, which is absolutely essential.

So far, I've only seen Lemon, Zorns Lemma and (nostalgia) (the three I'd heard namechecked most often), the last two once apiece (I watched Lemon a second time with the commentary, which obligingly confirmed that the lemon's resemblance to a pert female breast was anything but a coincidence), and was gripped throughout. I generally don't like to read up in advance about the guiding principles behind experimental films, because I like to see how they stand up to unprepared scrutiny, but all comfortably passed the test.

The meticulously structured, repetitive patterning of Zorns Lemma seems to be a perfect surrogate for the rote-learning process with the result that when the alphabet has entirely disappeared any engaged viewer should be able to match the unlettered footage with 'its' letter - book/A, vertical tree/F, wall-painting/K, basketball bouncing/O, flames/X, waves/Z, and so on - so, in effect, in less than an hour you've learned a new language and how to "translate" it. Obviously, there's much more going on there too, which repeated viewings should hopefully tease out - I'm sure the montages of words are anything but random (over and above their alphabetical sequence, that is).

(nostalgia) was even more fascinating, as it's one of the most demanding yet intellectually exhilarating explorations of memory and how it functions that I've ever encountered in a film. Unlike this poor sap, who seemed to think the film was completely random, I'd locked into the methodology by the third photo, and from then on I was absolutely hooked, trying to recall key details from the verbal description while simultaneously anticipating the eventual appearance of the photo being described and looking at the then-current photo and trying to recall its own description. Sometimes they turned out pretty much as I'd anticipated (the dried spaghetti), sometimes decidedly not. And the Blu-ray transfer did a terrific job of highlighting the contrasting textures between photographic paper, ash and the brushed metal of the hotplate.

I feel sorry for people who had to review this to a deadline, though - I'm going to be exploring the set at the rate of one or two films a day maximum, which seems a far more sensible approach. Watching Zorns Lemma and (nostalgia) with only a 15-minute dinner break in between was... well, somewhat more demanding than I'm used to on a Friday night after a heavy week!