Avant-Garde, Experimental & Non-narrative Films

A subforum to discuss film culture and criticism.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

#226 Post by Gregory » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:39 pm

Yes, it's fiction -- it's what was later termed a mockumentary or a documentary satire. I thought it would be useful as a way of thinking about the nature of documentary, especially as it harshly critiques the genre's pretenses. Another one along these lines is Shirley Clarke's film of Gelber's Living Theater play The Connection, a dramatic performance about a documentary crew filming jazz musicians waiting for a heroin fix. The documentary crew has cinema verite pretenses but in fact ends up cajoling the subjects to get the kind of footage they think their audiences will want to see. The film's mise-en-scene and especially its editing seems to be part of what it's saying about the filmmaking process, or at least that was part of how I read it (I haven't seen it in well over a year). Maybe you were only looking for actual documentaries, but this kind of thing seemed related to looking at the limits of documentary.
Portrait of Jason, by the way, is a real documentary in that it's a filmed interview and yet it seems to have some qualities of performance.

Adam
Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:29 pm
Location: Los Angeles CA
Contact:

#227 Post by Adam » Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:25 pm

There are a whole bunch of interesting "mock docs," and a new book on the topic called F Is For Phony edited by Alex Juhasz and Jesse Lerner. All of them are in some way about deconstructing the tropes of filmmaking, and what & how the viewers ascertains "reality" and "Truth."

User avatar
Awesome Welles
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 6:02 am
Location: London

#228 Post by Awesome Welles » Fri Feb 01, 2008 1:50 pm

I got round to watching David Holzman's Diary and My Girlfriend's Wedding last night. On a personal level I really enjoyed Diary, as for my essay I think there are certainly things I can use, so thanks for the recommendation. With Wedding I'm just not sure, I think I need to absorb it a bit more, I'm not sure whether McBride fell into the verité trap, the thing he was critiquing. Well as I say I think I need to absorb it a bit more.

On another note I recently saw Sherman's March, which I thought was very good and the influence of Diary certainly felt evident when thinking about both films. There seems to be a real narcissistic strain throughout these documentaries which I just can't figure out. I don't know what the purpose of it is and what it seeks to represent.

For those who are not familiar with March Ross McElwee begins his documentary with a map of the the United States, an arrow detailing the march that Sherman took during the civil war and thus defeating the south. McElwee then cuts to himself in a New York loft, his girlfriend has just left him and this has impacted on the documentary. This sets the tone for the film as a whole, it is as much, if not more, about himself than about Sherman. Though McElwee always comes back to Sherman, Sherman it seems to provide the film with some sort of structure. McElwee tries to make some sense of his life by investigating the loves in his life and the possibility of finding new love. The relationships are always doomed and it seems that this might be because of the camera's presence, interestingly all the people in the film seem very comfortable with the camera from the budding actress to the Phd. linguistics student. McElwee compares himself to Sherman, though the links are more than tenuous. McElwee has a habit of chasing women who are unavailable, need to go away or do not get on with him. Just as the women in the film escape him so does his pursuit of Sherman, the film, or McElwee, does not seem to want to capture these things. It is more about the chase than the catch. McElwee places himself before the camera in something of a studyand even ventures to say that it is like he only has a life in order to film it. This is the narcissism again!

I'd like to read further into narcissism in cinema if anyone has any recommendations I'd be happy to hear them.

As for my other investigations I finally got around to watching my disk of Fata Morgana, which I enjoyed, I've been wanting to see it (and Lesson's in Darkness) for a long time (still chasing the latter). Are there any of Herzog's other Avant-Garde docs out in R2land?

Adam
Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:29 pm
Location: Los Angeles CA
Contact:

#229 Post by Adam » Fri Feb 01, 2008 7:58 pm

FSimeoni wrote: On another note I recently saw Sherman's March, which I thought was very good and the influence of Diary certainly felt evident when thinking about both films. There seems to be a real narcissistic strain throughout these documentaries which I just can't figure out. I don't know what the purpose of it is and what it seeks to represent.
I'm glad you found watching David Holzman's DIary of use. I think it's a good thoughtful film.

If you liked Sherman's March, be sure to check out Time Indefinite and 6 O'Clock News as well by McElwee. The equal of Sherman's March, or even better, with many of the same characters.

User avatar
gubbelsj
Joined: Fri Apr 14, 2006 2:44 pm
Location: San Diego

Norman McLaren box set

#230 Post by gubbelsj » Mon Feb 04, 2008 7:39 pm

I’ve been exploring the Norman McLaren box set over the past few weeks (it may be a while before I finish the whole thing, as I’m spacing out viewings so as not to burn out too soon) and have really been enjoying it. I’ll admit to knowing next to nothing about McLaren before reading some reviews of this set and stumbling across it at DVD Planet for a fair price, and it turned into an odd impulse buy for me. I’ve only made my way through the first two discs, but what a great collection. I adore McLaren’s playfulness, the way he experiments not only with form but with visual perception. I’m surprised at how consistently he manages to turn unpromising experiments into enjoyable and successful little films (although “unpromising” isn’t exactly the correct phase). His three related films concerning moving lines, for example – Lines Horizontal, Lines Vertical and Mosaic – sounded quite dry and academic on the page description but came alive so wonderfully on the screen.

I also enjoy his devotion to exploring sound, which sets him apart from many abstract filmmakers, who often seem to dispense with sound altogether or use it as a kind of afterthought. I keep thinking of Stan Brakhage, who I greatly admire, and who I’ve been thinking about recently thanks to the Jonathan Lethem book I just finished reading, The Fortress Of Solitude. The main character’s father is a Brooklyn artist who makes his living grudgingly painting covers for science fiction paperbacks, but whose grand project is an endless, unfinished abstract film painted directly onto 35 mm. At one point, the father takes the son to hear a lecture given by Brakhage, who Lethem does a decent job describing and impersonating. Good book. Anyway, I can’t help but find McLaren a welcome comparison to someone like Brakhage (who, I’ll say again, I adore). I’m happy to see McLaren exploring issues of abstraction and color and movement with such childlike enthusiasm (although there’s never any doubt as to McLaren’s intelligence and mastery of skill – I don’t mean to suggest he’s some kind of naïf) and an embrace of the rhythmic possibilities of wedding his images to sound. It’s nice to see works that could theoretically be enjoyed equally by young children and grizzled old academics. And while I don’t think art works should always aim at appealing to all age groups, it’s nice to see some that do so without slumming or condescending. As I noted above, I know very little about McLaren, and am curious what others have to say about him, his work, and his legacy. He does seem to be challenging greater assumptions about how much of a distinction we can make between animators and avant-gardists.

(Oh, and I’m also curious why this otherwise impeccable set seems to repeat several of McLaren’s films on different discs – Blinkety Blank, for example, while a wonderful film, shows up on Discs 1, 2 and 5. I know that each disc is structured thematically, and that Blinkety Blank makes sense in all 3 of the themes it has been grouped into, but it still seems like a weird oversight to me. Was each disc originally some kind of broadcast for the National Film Board of Canada?)
Last edited by gubbelsj on Wed Feb 06, 2008 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Norman McLaren box set

#231 Post by MichaelB » Mon Feb 04, 2008 7:48 pm

gubbelsj wrote:(Oh, and I’m also curious why this otherwise impeccable set seems to repeat several of McLaren’s films on different discs – Blinkety Blank, for example, while a wonderful film, shows up on Discs 1, 2 and 5. I know that each disc is structured thematically, and that Blinkety Blank makes sense in all 3 of the themes it has been grouped into, but it still seems like a weird oversight to me.
It's not an oversight at all - the discs are structured in the form of themed programmes rather than a more conventional chronological survey. As a result, it's entirely conceivable that certain films (the seminal Blinkety Blank being a very good example) might turn up in more than one programme, which might mean that they turn up on more than one disc. McLaren's work is typically so brief that this was an entirely practical proposition.

Personally, I love this arrangement, as I hate having to swap discs all the time - and the themed programmes approach often makes me want to look at certain films from a different angle.

(This is a good opportunity for me to post a public confession: I was given the McLaren set for Christmas 2006, when I was still working out the final specs of the BFI's Jan Å vankmajer collection, and I was so impressed with the themed programmes idea that I ripped it off wholesale. True, it's a lower-budget version than the NFB's, in that I couldn't afford to make a proprietary documentary for each collection so had to make do with a single screen of text, but it was most definitely an act of direct homage).

User avatar
Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: Norman McLaren box set

#232 Post by Gregory » Wed Feb 06, 2008 1:16 am

gubbelsj wrote:He does seem to be challenging greater assumptions about how much a distinction we can make between animators and avant-gardists.
The question of McLaren's legacy and place within the world of animators and avant-garde filmmakers is a complex one. He's almost always left out of critical discussions of mid-20th century avant-garde film, and I can only speculate about why this is. McLaren's own writings and interviews were anything but self-aggrandizing, and they often seemed to focus on the technical aspects of the films more than the aesthetic qualities. Critics may have simply followed suit, acknowledging McLaren as more of a technical innovator than an artist, perhaps with the assumption that his works speak for themselves in a way that Brakhage's and Harry Smith's (etc.) do not. This relates to the "childlike" or child-friendly quality that gubbelsj observed. Even McLaren's most confrontational works, such as "Neighbors," were shown widely in schools (albeit in censored form). This may have contributed to some critical perception that McLaren's films, while extremely influential, were just too entertaining to be considered high art worthy of careful analysis.

There also may be a tendency to see McLaren as too distant from the avant-garde film "community." Much of the work he did at the National Film Board was commercial in a sense -- not that they were intended to make money necessarily but rather had a wide public appeal for whatever reason. Many of his colleagues there worked in veins that were similarly accessible (relative to the avant-garde, at least), such as Grant Munro, and George Dunning, who made Yellow Submarine). I don't point this out to denigrate McLaren; I actually come too close for comfort to idolizing the man. McLaren himself acknowledged that, while personal experiences occasionally led him to produce challenging works such as "Neighbors" and "Hell Unlimited," living in Montreal for so long lulled him into a complacent aesthetic environment in which he tended to produce films that didn't speak to his strong convictions and personal feelings (lively and innovative though they were). As far as I know this is the only major regret he had about his career.

Anyway, I would argue that McLaren was not in a kind of bubble at the NFB that isolated him from the community of filmmakers more frequently considered avant-garde. I think his work was appealing to the public by its nature rather than by design. While he was at the National Film Board he enjoyed a degree of creative freedom that few professional filmmakers ever experience. And Oskar Fischinger, for example, did his share of commercial work and yet he is generally placed within the avant-garde and receives greater critical attention than someone like McLaren, so the whole thing doesn't really make sense.

Finally, I would argue that McLaren and his work were fully interwoven with the entire tradition of 20th century experimental animation and, at least to some extent, with the avant-garde. He explicitly acknowledged a debt to pioneers such as Méliès, Fischinger, and Len Lye, Emile Cohl, and some of the surrealists. And many directors who weren't fixtures at the National Film Board were invited there as resident filmmakers and later cited McLaren as a key influence (such as Walerian Borowczyk).
I don't mean to harp on McLaren's critical neglect, but the question of where animators such as McLaren fit in relation to the avant garde got me thinking about just how little writing (especially interpretive) has been done on the man's works.

Perhaps it ultimately doesn't matter at all how "great" McLaren is considered by critics or the public. We have the body of work, which is the most important thing, and the Master's Edition set has been an incredible tool for all of us who appreciate this sort of thing to see just how much he achieved. Even the tests, experiments, and outtakes in the set are often revelatory, at least to me. I thought I knew almost all of his techniques having seen most of his finished films before getting the Master's Edition, and yet I kept having moments of being unable to believe what I was seeing -- such as "The Corridor," "McLaren at Play," or the late experimentation of the "Last Dance" just to name a couple of examples from the first disc.

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

#233 Post by zedz » Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:50 pm

A very interesting reflection on McLaren. I think one of the important aspects of McLaren's career that sets him apart from so many acknowledged 'experimental' filmmakers - and this is something that has nothing to do with the nature of his work - is the institutional support he received. It's so unusual to see an experimental filmmaker nurtured in the way that McLaren was, and by his government, no less, that his career narrative and body of work doesn't really resemble most other experimental filmmakers, with their continual struggle for resources and oppositional positioning within their local film culture. Plus, and as a consequence of this, McLaren's films were very widely seen, and thus that much easier to take for granted. It's very easy for me to imagine that several other experimental filmmakers (Fischinger and Lye, certainly) could have had similar careers if they'd only been fortunate enough to find a patron as supportive as the NFB.

In terms of his actual work, I consider McLaren one of the greatest of experimental filmmakers. Given the breadth of his technique, he may even be one of the most experimental, and, as Gregory notes, it's not the technical breadth of a dilettante, but of a Renaissance master.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

#234 Post by MichaelB » Wed Feb 06, 2008 5:16 pm

I bought Terence Dobson's The Film Work of Norman McLaren on impulse after spotting it in a bookshop, and was astonished to discover that it's the only really substantial book on his work - and it was only published a year ago!

I pretty much agree 100% with both of you - it's patently ludicrous to call McLaren a dilettante, and I was a huge admirer even before I bought the 7-disc box (I also own the 2-disc survey and a couple of VHS compilations).

I do have one tiny quibble about Zedz' post, which is that it wasn't his government that backed him. In fact, Canada was the third country he worked in, having previously had a somewhat uneasy relationship with the GPO Film Unit in London (which only produced one masterpiece in Love on the Wing, and that was suppressed by its backers) and a period of convincingly playing the starving artist in a garret in the US. By extraordinarily happy coincidence, his old admirer John Grierson (who had spotted his talent back in 1935) had been asked to head up the National Film Board of Canada, and that's how McLaren ended up there. Unbelievably lucky, certainly - but he made the most of his opportunities.

As Gregory says, it's easy to dismiss McLaren because much of his work is so brief and so amusing - there's something about work that's intentionally funny that seems to get people's backs up (György Ligeti is another very great artist who's occasionally regarded with suspicion for similar reasons). But once you explore the 7 discs - and I'm nowhere near finished - it becomes clear what a truly astonishing body of work it is, even when it's unfinished. Talking of which, isn't Head Test from 1944 one of the creepiest things ever committed to celluloid?

User avatar
Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

#235 Post by Gregory » Wed Feb 06, 2008 9:11 pm

zedz wrote:I think one of the important aspects of McLaren's career that sets him apart from so many acknowledged 'experimental' filmmakers - and this is something that has nothing to do with the nature of his work - is the institutional support he received. It's so unusual to see an experimental filmmaker nurtured in the way that McLaren was, and by his government, no less, that his career narrative and body of work doesn't really resemble most other experimental filmmakers, with their continual struggle for resources and oppositional positioning within their local film culture.
Very true. I might take this a tiny bit further and wonder aloud whether some perceived him as some kind of industrial filmmaker for much of his career. After all, he did "New York Lightboard," to help build Canada's tourism industry, twenty years into his tenure at the National Film Board.
While I do stand by what I said earlier about the exceptional level of creative freedom he enjoyed at the NFB, I think there was an exception to this: the World War II era. Many of his early films there, as great as they are, were used as war effort PSAs, notably as advertisements for war bonds, whereas McLaren was a pacifist. He made them in his own way, certainly -- "Hen Hop" is, in form, about the farthest thing from a propaganda film I can imagine. But maybe just looking at the form misses an important part of the point. But I wonder if some might have seen his position at the NFB as artistic compromise, either because they misunderstood it or even out of envy.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

#236 Post by MichaelB » Thu Feb 07, 2008 3:37 am

Gregory wrote:Very true. I might take this a tiny bit further and wonder aloud whether some perceived him as some kind of industrial filmmaker for much of his career. After all, he did "New York Lightboard," to help build Canada's tourism industry, twenty years into his tenure at the National Film Board.
Then again, Walerian Borowczyk made pasta commercials - and he wasn't a filmmaker normally given to compromise. But he also had to put food on the table, so...
But I wonder if some might have seen his position at the NFB as artistic compromise, either because they misunderstood it or even out of envy.
I'm sure envy played a huge part!

User avatar
zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

#237 Post by zedz » Thu Feb 07, 2008 4:32 pm

There is a glorious tradition of 'artistic compromise' for avant garde filmmakers, particularly for those like McLaren who got their start before anything like a codified underground filmmaking community developed. Fischinger & Disney, Lye & the GPO, the Soviet silent avant-garde, Vorkapich and so on. These guys needed to eat, after all. But the NFB really did seem to leave McLaren to his own devices while providing all the technical support he required. My vote's for envy as well.

User avatar
Kinsayder
Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2005 6:22 pm
Location: UK

#238 Post by Kinsayder » Fri Feb 08, 2008 12:35 pm

I don't think Perec and Queysanne's Un homme qui dort (1974) has been mentioned yet.

I've been watching this in the gorgeous new French edition from the 1999 Arte restoration. There are no subs but then there's no dialogue either. The voiceover, from Perec's book, is offered in French (Ludmila Mikaël), English (Shelley Duvall), German or Spanish. I wasn't sure what to expect from this film (about a student's descent into alienation and schizophrenia). In fact it's mesmerisingly beautiful, with strong echoes of Resnais (Paris filmed like Marienbad), startling images and a rich, complex soundtrack.

This is one of two French Perec-themed DVD releases. The other, which I haven't seen, has Ellis Island Tales and Les Lieux d'une fugue.

User avatar
Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

#239 Post by Gregory » Sun Feb 10, 2008 8:24 pm

As a follow-up to the earlier Harry Partch DVD (see page 4 of this thread) Innova has released Enclosure 8, which includes the Madeline Tourtelot films and a few performances. Full details here. The Enclosure 7 DVD looked to me like a VHS port, but the Innova page says the films here have been "extensively restored, resynched and digitally remastered from the extant original prints" and that this release "offers not only a chance to see higher quality versions of previously-available material."

User avatar
vertovfan
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 7:46 pm

#240 Post by vertovfan » Fri Feb 29, 2008 12:25 am

Coming from Facets on May 28 - 4 DVD set - The Lawrence Jordan Album

From Facets' website:
An extensive collection of works from acclaimed American animator and experimental filmmaker Larry Jordan. Spanning five decades, the range of films included here show Jordan to be an influential director of live-action shorts, as well as a master of cut-out animation. He meticulously combines 19th-century engravings, modern imagery, and common symbols to construct unmistakable, dream-like narratives. Disc One features "The Short Animations" (Duo Concertantes, Gymnopedies, Our Lady of the Sphere, Orb, Once Upon a Time, Moonlight Sonata, Carabosse, and Masquerade), followed by the animated retelling of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1977, 42 mins.)--narrated by Orson Welles--and Enid's Idyll (17 mins.). Disc Two houses "The H.D. Trilogy" (1994, 115 mins.), a loving portrait of poet and novelist Hilda Doolittle told in three parts: The Black Oud, The Grove, and Star of Day. Disc Three consists of Sophie's Place (1986, 86 mins.), The Visible Compendium (1990, 17 mins.), and Blue Skies Beyond the Looking Glass (17 mins.). Disc Four comprises The Sacred Art of Tibet (1972, 28 mins.), "The Short Live Films" (Visions of a City, Adagio, In a Summer Garden, Winter Light, and Cornell, 1965), and "Odyssey" (Water Light, Tapestry, and Postcard from San Miguel).

I've only seen a few of these, and I'm very excited to check out the rest!

ptmd
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:12 pm

#241 Post by ptmd » Fri Feb 29, 2008 12:52 am

Wow, that's amazing news. Sophie's Place is one of the great avant-garde films of the 1980s and the others aren't far behind. If this is the same quality as their Broughton set, I will be very pleased.

User avatar
Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

#242 Post by Gregory » Fri Feb 29, 2008 3:41 pm

Fantastic, provided they do at least as good a job as with the Broughton set.
Anyone who loves "Un Chien Andalou," "Blood of a Poet," and work of Harry Smith and Joseph Cornell (not just the films) should seek this out once it's released.

User avatar
Ovader
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:56 am
Location: Canada

R. Bruce Elder

#243 Post by Ovader » Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:35 pm

I have the opportunity to attend a lecture by R. Bruce Elder called "Cosmological Themes and New Media Technologies: The Body and The Celestial Dance." The Work and Processes of Bruce Elder. I have never seen any of his films and I could not see any mention of his past works in this thread. What are your opinions of his work and possible comparisons with other filmmakers? If I do attend this lecture what questions would you ask of him?

User avatar
foggy eyes
Joined: Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:58 am
Location: UK

#244 Post by foggy eyes » Thu May 29, 2008 10:06 am

vertovfan wrote:Coming from Facets on May 28 - 4 DVD set - The Lawrence Jordan Album
It's out - can anyone report on quality yet?

Mestes
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 8:39 pm

#245 Post by Mestes » Sun Jun 01, 2008 10:01 pm

foggy eyes wrote:
vertovfan wrote:Coming from Facets on May 28 - 4 DVD set - The Lawrence Jordan Album
It's out - can anyone report on quality yet?
Haven't watched all 21 films yet, but the shorts I saw were adequate, and appeared to be from good source prints. Plently of small, transient blemishes, but they didn't distract me. I am pleased with the package, and feel Facets did as good a job on this as they did on "The Films Of James Broughton", a filmmaker I like a good deal less than Larry Jordan.

osmin
Joined: Sat Jun 14, 2008 10:47 am

Larry Jordan

#246 Post by osmin » Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:35 am

I just watched the first DVD of the Lawrence Jordan Album and liked it but I have the impression the picture is slightly cropped at the left side of the frame. What I wanted to say is that I am from Germany and a few weeks ago I saw the restored version of the Brasilian film "Limite" (1931) by Mario Peixoto who was strongly influenced by the French avantgarde of his time, not so much by Bunuel or Cocteau but by the French impressionists like Delluc, Gance, L'Herbier or Epstein. A strangely poetic film. It was shown by the French-German television channel ARTE and maybe absolutmedien.de will publish it on DVD on their arte edition series (like the 3 Films by Germaine Dulac). It is not mentioned in their list of coming attractions but they announce a DVD edition of the history of German animation. The first DVD will contain avantgarde animation of the 20s and 30s.
Now I want to ask if anyone of you knows whether the first two volumes of the Film Works of Robert Frank (Steidlville.com) is out. And has anyone bought the 2 DVD Fluxbox from re:voir for 100 €? Does it contain the same shorts as the Fluxfilm Anthology?

User avatar
Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

Re: Larry Jordan

#247 Post by Gregory » Mon Jun 16, 2008 11:43 pm

osmin wrote:I just watched the first DVD of the Lawrence Jordan Album and liked it but I have the impression the picture is slightly cropped at the left side of the frame.
Welcome, osmin.
May I ask what makes you think the picture is cropped? This interests me because I also recently got this set and I was watching disc one and looking at the illustrations in a book I have that shows what I assume are stills from some of the same 1960s and '70s films. Comparing them, the DVD transfer appears to be significantly cropped on 3-4 sides. I emphasize "appears to be" because I think there are some fishy things going on with the images in this book I have. Many of them do not correspond exactly to what are in these films, and I'm not just talking about framing. Some of them are collages that simply don't appear in the films as they're presented on the Facets set, so I wonder if they are indeed stills from the finished films or what they are. Anyway, I fear that they may indeed be cropped, although it is a little hard to tell with compositions like these. But if you look at the image in Orb where there is a large sun in the middle of a town square: the bottom of the image cuts through the middle of the people and the horse-drawn carriage, so that definitely doesn't seem right.

osmin
Joined: Sat Jun 14, 2008 10:47 am

Larry Jordan

#248 Post by osmin » Sat Jun 21, 2008 9:27 am

Thanks for the welcome. No, I think it is the usual cropping of films in the 4:3 aspect ratio. In the old classics you have the original title credits with this black frame around them to make sure that no letter gets cropped and when the movie begins they zoom into the picture. So practically every time there is a loss of information on all four sides of the frame. Normally it isn't that much distracting but in some cases it really is annoying. One such case in my opinion is the US Kino disc of Bunuel's "L'age d'or" where they cut off lots of heads. I bought the british BFI disc and I think they did it better though not perfect. Besides there is a much better looking "Chien andalou" on second disc. You surely know the Norman McLaren Master's Edition. There they deliberately made the picture smaller to make sure that no information of the original films get lost.

User avatar
Gregory
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 4:07 pm

#249 Post by Gregory » Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:41 pm

It sounds like you're saying the problem is overscan and that Facets should have windowboxed it. What I'm noticing here is actual cropping by Facets, i.e. information on the sides of the image that just isn't there. I double-checked the overscan setting on my projector just to be sure that this was not the culprit.
After my last post I compared Cornell 1965 on the Facets set to the one on Magical Worlds of Joseph Cornell and the framing looked identical to me, but I still think there might be some serious cropping to the some of the animated works like Orb and Our Lady. I'll try to do a little more investigating and report back.

Regarding your earlier question about the new Robert Frank releases, volumes 1-3 are available now. I won't be buying them, but fortunately I have a library nearby that has them available. I plan to watch them sometime this summer.

osmin
Joined: Sat Jun 14, 2008 10:47 am

Larry Jordan

#250 Post by osmin » Sun Jun 22, 2008 12:11 pm

The cropping ist obvious when you look at the intertitles of "Duo concertantes". But I think it is just the overscan. I am very glad Facets is publishing the works of experimental filmmakers from the US and hope they will continue. Would like to have Harry Smith or John and James Whitney or Robert Breer. Speaking of Larry Jordan I would like to recommend some other DVDs which contain the works of experimental animators. The style of Larry Jordan reminds me of the films of Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk. There is a very very good - and quite inexpensive - double disc from Poland called "Antologia polskiej animacji (Anthology of Polish Animated Film)". You can get it from merlin.pl. If you order don't forget the Anthology of Polish Childrens Animation (3 DVD for the same price) which contains quite some experimental animation, too. Not so cheap are the french discs with the films of Piotr Kamler and Raoul Servais but they are worth it. I also recommend the Japanese Yoji Kuri disc from Geneon but it costs $41 at yesasia (guess this is the best price and it was cheaper there some time ago) but it is not for everyone's taste. I very much like the Australian DVD "Experimental Works of Osamu Tezuka" (yes, the one with Astroboy). A disc I recently watched and liked very much is Johanna Vaude's "Hybride" from lowave (has it been mentioned before on this forum?).

Post Reply