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Having made my way through PWA's brilliant Polish Experimental Animation set, I was particularly blown away by the brace of Zbigniew Rybczynski shorts (there's another brilliant pair on the first animation set).

Both of his films on the experimental set are masterpieces. New Book is a far more elaborate version of Figgis’ Timecode, with nine continuous ten minute takes (arranged Hollywood Squares fashion) that don’t just narratively interlock, but visually interlock as well (so that, as figures or objects leave the left side of one frame they enter the right side of the adjacent one, even though the physical spaces presented in each frame are not contiguous): an overwhelming technical feat that has to be watched multiple times.

Oh, I Can’t Stop! is hilarious – a brilliant coupling of the world’s longest (and accelerating!) tracking shot with the world’s funniest foley track. I get the compulsion to rewatch this film every couple of days.

Anyway, I've just noticed that there's a two-disc Rybczynski compilation available from Raro Video, containing three hours of material. Has anybody seen this?

Raro have a trailer for the set up on YouTube.

You can also find a few of his music videos there. 80s nostalgists may recall Art of Noise's 'Close (to the Edit)'.

Wow, I just happened on one of Zbigniew Rybczynski's animations online just yesterday. I think it's one that's more widely known (Tango), but I was considerably impressed. I seldom see ideas conveyed so elegantly and unobtrusively as they are in Polish animation (or Eastern Europe in general). Considering how much I love the stuff, I really need to get that set soon. Does the set have English subs? (For the most part I think it wouldn't need them, I'm just curious.)
Is Schabenbeck's Stairs on the set? I remember seeing it on a list someplace, possibly a supposed release on this set, but it may have been removed or I may be mistaken. That's another doozy.

I'll have a region-free player within a few weeks, so I may try to get this before the year is out.

Tango and Stairs are both on the first (indispensible) PWA animation anthology, which is completely English-friendly, including the thick book.

The Raro Rybscynski set is also advertised as containing English subs, and their releases also tend to have generous, bilingual booklets.

Many Zbig shorts are available on 3 separate R1 sets directly from his website.

Manhatta has been digitally restored and was screened at MOMA over the weekend in a 35mm print. Interesting to hear curator Bruce Posner sing the praises of digital over film.

Posner wrote:The second time our print was screened, I saw two new pieces of dirt on it. I started laughing. Here we go, I’ll never look back again

I'll bet celluloid can also act as a breeding ground for all kinds of dangerous germs.

zedz wrote:Anyway, I've just noticed that there's a two-disc Rybczynski compilation available from Raro Video, containing three hours of material. Has anybody seen this?

I have, Mr zedz!

Unfortunately, it's not great news.

The packaging and documentation is up to Raro's high standard, with a thick MoC scale book (and bonus Zbig-designed bookmark), but the transfers are generally rough and analogue. The films shared with the PWA releases (Soup, New Book and Tango) look much much worse and most of the other film-based works are on the same level. The later video works fare better. The set seems to be Zbig-endorsed, so the source for the sub-standard transfers may well be himself. I'd be interested to hear whether his own DVD releases are any better.

The set is all English-friendly, but there are no sub options on the films. In practical terms, this means that the minimal dialogue in New Book goes untranslated and the English dialogue in Steps and the Orchestra making-of has forced Italian subtitles.

So, disappointing presentation in general, but the films are great (and the liner notes suggest that there are greater riches to be unearthed).

Other than the classics already available on the PWA sets (which benefit from the extra info in the books - those who have already had their minds blown by the achievement of New Book now have to deal with the information that it was filmed in three different cities), the highlights are three brilliant and very brief late seventies / early eighties shorts:

Mein Fenster - a single static shot of a birdcage, a television and bottle, the contents of which (bird, news report and wine) do a slow, elegant 360 turn before our eyes - an ingenious variation on Astaire's Royal Wedding stunt.

Weg zum Nachbarn - a bonus short, not credited on any of the packaging or menus, but playing right after Mein Fenster. It's almost the reverse of that film. Here, a man stands near a signpost in the landscape. The film has been treated to look like a very old, battered silent film. Gradually, the entire world starts to tilt (farm equipment slides past), turning upside down and leaving the man momentarily hanging over the abyss, clinging to the weakening wooden signpost.

Media - Even shorter and with the same ingenious minimal clarity and wit of the previous two films. Here footage of a man appears on the screen of an editing bed. He's playing with a balloon, which is 'encased' on a television screen (enacting Rybczynski's own 'suspension' between film and video at the time), so the television itself is gently bouncing around the editing equipment as the film plays. When the balloon is popped, the television comes smashing to the ground and soon after the film runs out in the gate of the editing bed. It's a completely magical, 'how-did-he-do-that' miniature.

The 'major works' on the disc, in terms of running time, are three ambitious video works Rybczynski made in the USA. For me, they're sort of a mixed bag:

Steps - this film has a gob-smackingly brilliant premise. A pushy Russian entrepreneur offers Americans a guided tour of the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin - quite literally, with the contemporary colour Americans inhabiting Eisenstein's frames and montage. Unfortunately, the film doesn't live up to its potential. The video compositing technology is brilliantly deployed, but it's only barely up to the technical challenge Rybczynski presents. More damagingly, the lazy characterisations and obvious gags don't deliver. For every inspired interpolation (a bystander's ghetto blaster gets swept away by the baby carriage) there's a badly executed joke that's as dumb and crass as the behaviour it's trying to skewer.

The Fourth Dimension - a fascinating experiment that twists still compositions (including human figures) into spiralling sculptural forms, but the transfer was poor and at 30 minutes this soon turned into a glorified screen-saver.

The Orchestra - or six classical music videos. This actually worked really well, pushing pre-CGI video technology to expressive heights. My favourite sequences were Chopin's Funeral March played one note at a time by a cast of thousands along an infinite piano keyboard; Schubert's Ave Maria gracefully embodied by a naked couple floating under the roof of Chartres Cathedral; and the film's grand finale, Ravel's Bolero embodied as the glorious march of Communism (against a hellish setting sun) up an endless flight of steps. This is another cast-of-thousands affair, staged as a historical pageant-cum-relay race. The Orchestra is nearly an hour long (the publicity all insists it's 71 minutes, but that seems to be the combined running time of the film itself and the okay making-of that's also included) but it's inventive enough to justify its length.

zedz wrote:Having made my way through PWA's brilliant Polish Experimental Animation set, I was particularly blown away by the brace of Zbigniew Rybczynski shorts (there's another brilliant pair on the first animation set).

Both of his films on the experimental set are masterpieces. New Book is a far more elaborate version of Figgis’ Timecode, with nine continuous ten minute takes (arranged Hollywood Squares fashion) that don’t just narratively interlock, but visually interlock as well (so that, as figures or objects leave the left side of one frame they enter the right side of the adjacent one, even though the physical spaces presented in each frame are not contiguous): an overwhelming technical feat that has to be watched multiple times.

Oh, I Can’t Stop! is hilarious – a brilliant coupling of the world’s longest (and accelerating!) tracking shot with the world’s funniest foley track. I get the compulsion to rewatch this film every couple of days.

It turns out I'd seen both of these before, and indeed most of the other titles Zedz mentions elsewhere, courtesy of Channel 4's Zbigniew Rybczynski retrospective back in December 1991 (doesn't the whole notion of that sound completely unbelievable today?) - though having them on a superb quality DVD as opposed to an off-air VHS made it like watching them for the first time. Oh, I Can't Stop! now really reminds me of Shinya Tsukamoto's early work - both visually and aurally: I wonder if Tsukamoto had seen it?

Just wanted to give you all a heads up that in conjunction with the release of Treasures from American Film Archives IV, which is avant-garde work listed in the A-G on DVD thread, there will be a few shows of restored films from the collection. Each show is a little different.

Two will be at Anthology Film Archives, on March 18 & 19
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One will be at the San Francisco Cinematheque on April 15
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And I'll be having one at Los Angeles Filmforum, date still to be determined, but probably late March.
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Bruce Baille is currently offering a limited-edition DVD of five shorts, available only through Canyon Cinema:

Bruce Baillie has just announced the release of his first DVD collection. This collection contains five films and is offered in a limited edition of 100 signed and numbered. This volume includes Tung, Mass for the Dakota Sioux, Valentin de las Sierras, Castro Street, and All My Life. These are newly restored versions of each title. $50 for home use; $300 Institutions.

So now that announcement should go in the A-G on DVD thread, not this one.

Interesting. I remember a while ago on Baillie's home page (which is down now?) there was an announcement about a few remaining copies of a two-disc DVD set ("Volume I") available through Canyon Cinema at a reduced price. I had emailed Canyon about it and received no reply. I'll be ordering this new item, though. Baillie is one of the great living filmmakers of the avant garde.

There will be one Baillie film on Treasures IV.

I understand that the contributors to this forum are first and foremost interested in the American Avantgarde. But believe me there are lots of treasures to be lifted regarding European Avangarde-DVDs. I like to draw your attention to the following item that was recently issued.

This comes in form of a book with two DVDs in it. Texts are in dutch, french and english. English subtitles are available. As far as I could see picture quality is quite good. And as I said there are much more interesting DVDs from the European Avantgarde to be found on various websites.

I would say that first and foremost, the discussion of cinema as an art is this forum's main preoccupation. We've dedicated a few posts here and there to some great European Avant-Garde filmmakers. I recall some great things being said about Paolo Gioli and Frans Zwartjes (both discussions led me to buy both DVD's). In other words, WE BELIEVE YOU!

I look forward to getting that when I have money again...

The BFI has just published Len Lye's N or NW and Norman McLaren's Love on the Wing on YouTube.

There have been rival versions uploaded in the past, but these are:

(a) higher resolution
(b) from a high-quality Digibeta source as opposed to a fuzzy VHS off-air recording, and
(c) 100% legal!

I was given a great experimental film by a friend. It was a Hong Kong picture called First Love. Its got two very funny and interesting love pieces. The first about a girl who goes to random places while she sleepwalks and the second about a man who fears his ex fiancee.

Has anyone seen this?

AttitudeAJM wrote:I was given a great experimental film by a friend. It was a Hong Kong picture called First Love. Its got two very funny and interesting love pieces. The first about a girl who goes to random places while she sleepwalks and the second about a man who fears his ex fiancee.

Has anyone seen this?

Yes, last night as it happens - Artificial Eye are releasing it imminently as part of their Jet Tone collection.

I was less enamoured of it than you, though - lots of good ideas, but wildly self-indulgent and I got the distinct impression that loads of private in-jokes were flying way over my head. It's basically Wong Kar-Wai goes postmodern, which isn't necessarily a good thing.

I agree with that. I guess I loved it so much for the whimsical stories. The director dumping in his own voice over and mini segments between shorts did disrupt the flow. The cinematography was also impressive. But I guess you can't expect anything less from Christopher Doyle.

I've mentioned this in the BFI thread already, but I'm very happy to confirm not only that both the Blu-ray and DVD editions of their Jeff Keen box are region-free, but all the video material on the Blu-ray disc is in HD, so it should play perfectly on any player worldwide.

That said, because half the films come on DVDs (there was felt to be little point in transferring the 8mm and VHS-sourced material to HD) your DVD player still needs to be able to handle PAL video - but that's much more easily got around than Blu-ray regional issues.

And for a taster, here's Keen's Marvo Movie (1967) in its entirety.

osmin wrote: 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 ...

Did anyone else see this broadcast of Limite? I acquired a rip of the broadcast, and while delighted by the image quality, I was not very impressed with the music, which seemed flat and lifeless, particularly the Debussy version of Satie's 3 Gymnopédies, which kind of constitutes the primary theme of loss and sadness for the rest of the film.

I remember it imperfectly, but didn't they use recordings of the music that were used or even expressedly specified for use at the time of the film's release? In any case, a magnificent film and resto.

They are the same music pieces, i e the ones specified by Peixoto, and in the right order, but they are not the same performances of the music-- not by a long shot.

If you had both versions to compare, you'd know in a nanosecond what I'm talking about.