Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive Art

B&W, SOUND.

Electronic music by Fred Coulter. With Bob Ohlrich, Pat Myers, Jake Leed, Mary Leed. “… a work of ambition and great technical virtuosity … there is enough going on in AKRAN to command anyone’s attention. And much of that is lovely and wonderfully difficult.” – Greenspun, The New York Times

“AKRAN by Richard Myers was unquestionably the discovery of the year …. It captures in rapid brilliant flashes the fears, the frustrations, the hang-ups, the hopes – the emotional texture of young people today …. It is a fascinating, penetrating film, and introduces Myers as one of the most original and creative independent talents around today.” – Arthur KnightRead More »

from rottentomatoes:
Michael Wadleigh’s WOODSTOCK: THREE DAYS OF PEACE & MUSIC finds the best rock stars of the 1960s performing at the historic Woodstock Music and Art Fair, the most celebrated rock concert of all time. Shot over the course of three days in August 1969, the film conveys the unique spirit of the once-in-a-lifetime, communal event, and in turn, captures the mood of an entire era. Amazingly volatile, electrifying performances are included by such timeless artists as Richie Havens; Joan Baez; The Who; Sha Na Na; Joe Cocker; Country Joe and The Fish; Arlo Guthrie; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Ten Years After; Santana; Sly and the Family Stone; Jimi Hendrix; Canned Heat; John Sebastian; Jefferson Airplane; and Janis Joplin. In addition to the music, the film’s historical relevance is what makes it such an important time capsule, thrillingly eternalizing the legendary event for generations to come.Read More »

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“Why would I tie myself to one woman if I were interested in others?” says Jerôme, even as he plans on marrying a diplomat’s daughter by summer’s end. Before then, Jerôme spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse nursing crushes on the sixteen-year-old Laura and, more tantalizingly, Laura’s long-legged, blonde stepsister, Claire. Baring her knee on a ladder under a blooming cherry tree, Claire unwittingly instigates Jerôme’s moral crisis and creates both one of French cinema’s most enduring moments and what has become the iconic image of Rohmer’s Moral Tales.Read More »

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A magical voyage into the subconscious in search of “the lost continent” of first human memories. Based on Anais Nin’s prose poem, the film provides a visual equivalent in subaqueous, drifting imagery taken from reality but entirely transformed into a new and sensuously poetic universe. Excellent electronic score by Louis and Bebe Barron. – Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive ArtRead More »

The flirtatious title of Milos Forman’s breakthrough comedy Loves of a Blonde says a lot about the film without even trying. Everybody in Forman’s bittersweet film thinks about sex constantly but only in terms of hypothetical scenarios that almost never come to pass. The funny thing about these daydreams of coitus is that they’re not strictly sexy. In fact, most of the time characters in Loves of a Blonde are wringing their hands about sex, even the trio of homely soldiers licking their lips at the thought of seducing a table of bored blondes at a local dance. First they send alcohol to the wrong table and are subsequently unsure of how long they should smile at the girls they plan on getting drunk and taking to the woods (they aren’t even sure if the idea of taking girls to the woods for sex is just a euphemism or not). Sex is comedy here because it breeds nothing but the kind of anxiety that the title of Forman’s film teems with.Read More »

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King’s feature debut, Warrendale, about a collection of volatile children from the titular Toronto-based rehabilitation center, has been compared to the works of Pennebaker, Maysles, and Rouch within the cinema vérité and Direct Cinema movements. But King’s approach to capturing the children’s emotional ebbs and flows as they experience anger, guilt, and finally tragedy, seems arguably more human, hypnotically attuned to the delicate sensitivities of people’s movements and sounds. As the adult caregivers attempt to build trust with these damaged children, King focuses on the intimate moments of counseling, reassurance, and discourse structuring the narrative. That these sequences often devolve into hysterical fits and seizures makes the film all the more forceful, showing the dark undercarriage of childhood trauma without any buffer or safety net. The film’s striking emotional centerpiece, a family-style meeting between counselors and children about the sudden death of the house cook, is a breathtaking display of collective heartbreak and rejuvenation that creates a frenzy of repressed rage. In a single moment, King’s camera becomes engulfed in an emotional war zone, pinned down but never overwhelmed by honest, raw expression, always able to capture the small moments on the fringes of the frame.Read More »

A silent film of collaged and painted sequences of lovemaking between Schneemann and her then partner, composer James Tenney; observed by the cat, Kitch.

Carolee Schneemann wrote:
…I wanted to see if the experience of what I saw would have any correspondence to what I felt– the intimacy of the lovemaking… And I wanted to put into that materiality of film the energies of the body, so that the film itself dissolves and recombines and is transparent and dense– as one feels during lovemaking… It is different from any pornographic work that you’ve ever seen– that’s why people are still looking at it! And there’s no objectification or fetishization of the womanRead More »

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In 1964, with the Cuban Missile Crisis fresh in viewers’ minds, the Cold War at its frostiest, and the hydrogen bomb relatively new and frightening, Stanley Kubrick dared to make a film about what could happen if the wrong person pushed the wrong button — and played the situation for laughs.

Dr. Strangelove’s jet-black satire (from a script by director Stanley Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern) and a host of superb comic performances (including three from Peter Sellers) have kept the film fresh and entertaining, even as its issues have become (slightly) less timely. Loaded with thermonuclear weapons, a U.S. bomber piloted by Maj. T.J. “King” Kong (Slim Pickens) is on a routine flight pattern near the Soviet Union when they receive orders to commence Wing Attack Plan R, best summarized by Maj. Kong as “Nuclear combat! Toe to toe with the Russkies!” On the ground at Burpleson Air Force Base, Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) notices nothing on the news about America being at war.Read More »

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The film starts with a warning message, which reads:

WARNING. The producer, distributor, and exhibitors waive all liability for physical or mental injury possibly caused by the motion picture “The Flicker.” Since this film may induce epileptic seizures or produce mild symptoms of shock treatment in certain persons, you are cautioned to remain in the theatre only at your own risk. A physician should be in attendance.

The film then goes on to a frame that says “Tony Conrad Presents,” and then to a frame that says “The Flicker,” at which point it starts. The screen goes blank, then after a short while, the screen flickers with a single black frame. This is repeated again and again until it creates a strobe effect, for which the film is titled. This continues until the film stops abruptlyRead More »