Category Archives: Experimental

James Benning – El Valley Centro (2000)

By Anybody Posted in 1991-2000, Documentary, Experimental, James Benning, USA Leave a reply

vlcsnap2013051420h58m18 James Benning El Valley Centro (2000)

logoimdbb James Benning El Valley Centro (2000)

Quote:
I began El Valley Centro in November of 1998; I was driving through the Great Central Valley looking for places to film. I wasn’t going to start shooting for at least six months; I wanted to just look and listen – to get to know the Valley well before I would make images. But almost immediately I came across an oil well fire with flames high into the sky. I returned home for my Bolex and Nagra. Determined that landscape is a function of time, I let a full roll of 16mm film (100 feet) run through the camera. At that moment I knew I would make a portrait of The Great Central Valley using 35 two and a half minute shots.

Nearing the completion of El Valley Centro, I began planning an urban companion piece, Los, that was to be a portrait of Los Angeles. It seemed logical, for the politics of water certainly run from the Valley to the City. Los would have the same structure as El Valley Centro and would look and listen with the same intensity. The two films would be connected with the last shot of El Valley Centro pumping water out of the Valley over Wheeler Ridge while the first shot of Los would show Mulholland’s first spillway (still in use) bringing water into LA.

James Benning, December 2001 Continue reading →

James Benning – Los (2001)

By Anybody Posted in 2001-2010, Documentary, Experimental, James Benning, USA Leave a reply

vlcsnap2013051521h19m29 James Benning Los (2001)

logoimdbb James Benning Los (2001)

Quote:
I began El Valley Centro in November of 1998; I was driving through the Great Central Valley looking for places to film. I wasn’t going to start shooting for at least six months; I wanted to just look and listen – to get to know the Valley well before I would make images. But almost immediately I came across an oil well fire with flames high into the sky. I returned home for my Bolex and Nagra. Determined that landscape is a function of time, I let a full roll of 16mm film (100 feet) run through the camera. At that moment I knew I would make a portrait of The Great Central Valley using 35 two and a half minute shots.

Nearing the completion of El Valley Centro, I began planning an urban companion piece, Los, that was to be a portrait of Los Angeles. It seemed logical, for the politics of water certainly run from the Valley to the City. Los would have the same structure as El Valley Centro and would look and listen with the same intensity. The two films would be connected with the last shot of El Valley Centro pumping water out of the Valley over Wheeler Ridge while the first shot of Los would show Mulholland’s first spillway (still in use) bringing water into LA.

James Benning, December 2001 Continue reading →

Julian Hobbs – Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (2006)

By Anybody Posted in 2001-2010, Arthouse, Experimental, Julian Hobbs, USA Leave a reply

vlcsnap00007r Julian Hobbs Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (2006)

logoimdbb Julian Hobbs Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (2006)

Summary/Reviews (from Amazon.com):

Daniel Paul Schreber began Memoirs of my Nervous Illness in February 1900 while confined in an asylum, as part of
an appeal for release. Schreber, second son (the first committed suicide) of an abusive father, was at the peak of
a brilliant career in Leipzig when he was appointed Presiding Judge of the Saxon High Court of Appeals. Alas, the
stress of his new job proved too much for him, and before long he was hearing voices and feeling suicidal. Within
weeks he was committed, having rapidly descended into madness, and was placed under the care of Dr. Paul Emil
Flechsig. From the start, Schreber struggled to make sense of what he was seeing and hearing, and in fact Memoirs
is so lucid and self-aware, so internally consistent and insightful, that he was released on its strength. Still,
reading this man’s prose is a lesson in subjective reality, by turns funny and terrifying. Continue reading →

Wilhelm and Birgit Hein – Materialfilme (1976)

By Anybody Posted in 1971-1980, Experimental, Germany, Wilhelm and Birgit Hein Leave a reply

obwokb Wilhelm and Birgit Hein Materialfilme (1976)

logoimdbb Wilhelm and Birgit Hein Materialfilme (1976)

Quote:
For their 35mm Materialfilme (1976), the Heins randomly spliced together a mix of color and black and white material taken from the header and footer of commercial films. The scratches, scribbles, hand-written and commercially printed numbers and dots that adorn such footage rush past the eye until they are replaced by images consisting only of washed-out colors or scratched black and white frames. The Heins acquired this material during their years as programmers and projectionists for various avant-garde and commercial film screenings. [...] Over the years, this watercolor paint had faded and cracked, and various blotches, scratches and other irregularities have scarred the surface of the filmstrip. In projection, these marks of the material enter into arbitrary rhythmic relationships with the movement of color and the interrupting flashes of white light. Continue reading →

Various – Early Cinema : Primitives & Pioneers (1895 – 1910)

By Anybody Posted in 1891-1900, 1901-1910, Experimental, Silent, Various Leave a reply

65c917e8 Various Early Cinema : Primitives & Pioneers (1895 1910)

www.bfi.org.uk wrote:
The BFI’s fascinating collection of 60 short films all made before 1911 comes to DVD with the aim of giving wider access to some of the extraordinary film material held in the National Film and Television Archive, much of which has been restored. Although most films made at this time were actualities and newsreels, this collection contains mostly fiction films, ranging from the dramatic to the comic and the fantastical.

This double-disc set provides an entertaining look at how many film devices such as the close-up, the cut-away and editing, were first invented by film-makers before the turn of the century. Continue reading →

Morgan Fisher – Standard Gauge (1984)

By Anybody Posted in 1981-1990, Experimental, Morgan Fisher, USA Leave a reply

vlcsnap2012012611h19m03 Morgan Fisher Standard Gauge (1984)

logoimdbb Morgan Fisher Standard Gauge (1984)

Standard Gauge
1984, 16mm, colour, sound, 35 min

“While on one level, Standard Gauge is Fisher’s homage to 35mm and to the diverse cinematic world it made possible, the irony of its having been filmed in 16mm reveals a conceptual paradox central to the film, and which unites it with the webs of irony and paradox evident in his earlier work. (…) As Fisher explains in his program notes, the thirty-two minute shot “is virtually the maximum length of a scene in 16mm, and is longer by far than 35mm is capable of.” For all its potentials and accomplishments, standard gauge is limited, and in ways that a non standard gauge-a gauge quite marginal to mainstream film history-is not”. (Scott MacDonald) Continue reading →

Carmelo Bene – Nostra signora dei turchi AKA Our Lady of the Turks (1968)

By Anybody Posted in 1961-1970, Carmelo Bene, Cult, Experimental, Italy Leave a reply

Carmelo Bene Nostra signora dei turchi AKA Our Lady of the Turks (1968)

logoimdbb Carmelo Bene Nostra signora dei turchi AKA Our Lady of the Turks (1968)

Independent filmmaker Carmelo Bene makes his debut in this feature that concerns the murder of the Saracens in the city of Otranto centuries ago. Our Lady appears at various time in the film, symbolic of the carnal desires and spiritual dreams of all men. Flashbacks and avant garde cinematic techniques provide passages of erotica and black humor on occasion. The story was taken from Bene’s own novel as the author oversees all aspects of writing, production and direction in this experimental and provocative film. Continue reading →

pixel Carmelo Bene Nostra signora dei turchi AKA Our Lady of the Turks (1968)