Suggestion is the rock, and the physical evidence is the evanescent spray that breaks against the unseen. Transitive enharmonics of things touching in middair, an air which is Time—not an actual intersection, but with a consequence as powerful as predestination, a momentary fulfillment, a trail beyond mere pattern, like a streak of truth alive and uncontained, like something that runs through infinity slowing to leave condensation, sonority, a temperature. Lines crossing lines. Not there. There. Invisibilities smudging. Gesture and impression, optic suggestions, agents on and in the mind. Each with vibrations, dollops, whispers, throbs, particles and waves. A finger of pigment brushing a lip of language exchanging carriage supports, liquidities, fire. Moire of meanings. Micro settings in the heart. The time it takes. The very least one can say is to say The Extravagant Shadows is a major work. Humanly essential, adventurous and necessary.
Music: Carl Stone. Colored pen-and-ink drawings, like topological maps of biomorphic objects, grow and evolve from the red star. Once the master image is formed, this continuously throbbing, pulsating sight is used to ring changes based on years of optical work. Music and picture work together to create a mood of ecstatic tranquility. The bright colors, beautiful music, surprise at the end, etc. make this a good film for young children. Awards: Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival, 1973; Washington National Student Film Festival, 1974; Brooklyn Independent Filmmakers Exposition, 1974; Vanguard Int'l Competition of Electronic Music for Film, 1974; Humboldt Film Festival, 1974. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with iotaCenter and National Film Preservation Foundation in 2007.
The fan's self-sacrificing blades dance in the air, generating a refreshing breeze that wipes away the sweat of others and brings solace on a scorching day.
A space occupies it, awaiting to be unlocked by a freeing action or notion. What lies ahead is its determination.
Cut up animation and collage technique by Harry Smith synchronized to the jazz of Thelonious Monk's Mysterioso.
In an alternate universe, the dinosaurs have roared one too many times before the asteroid hits Earth. The consequences that follow could be catastrophic.
Black-and-white abstract animated short of light, shadows, and reflections by The Dodals (Karel Dodal (1900-1986) in collaboration with his wife, Irena Dodalová).
An attempt to constitute a human / machine dialogue. It shows the filmmaker’s blood as seen / heard with the eyes / ears of the machine which is a film projector with optical sound. He affixed his blood onto clear film leader by cutting into the flesh and then pressing the film leader onto the wound. Additionally he had blood taken with a syringe and afterwards dripped it on the film leader. fresh and clotted blood was used.
A film motivated by nothing (but daily life and (my) vision). It represents nothing, it signifies nothing. There’s no hidden meaning, no defined subject, no predetermined objective. Inside and outside. Just angles, textures and flashes of color. A whole different empire of vision, impossible to be put into words. “Nothing” as anything outside common visual knowledge, anything that defies the logic of naming the world; a possibility for a new way of thinking; of dealing with our visual world.
Ken Jacobs applies his patented Eternalism process to 3D images he took of Jackson Pollock's 1954 splatter painting.
Abstract vision, no montage, no effects, no sound...
Optical art with camera movement.
Noise, static, channel change...
Upset with where his life has gone, Torgo seeks to make some changes
I Can’t Get Away is a three-channel black-and-white silent video. The video depicts 4 sequences: a figure perpetuating walking away; a figure bounded to an immobile tree; a figure running away from another figure, and vice versa. The performances of stages within the grieving process, different modes and processes to grapple with loss and the sensibilities that comes with mourning impermanence.
“Leda + Swans” depicts an infernal, mythic birth of cinema, dredging the violence and horror from Wallace McCutcheon’s comic short film “Photographing a Female Crook” (1904). Leda, who may or may not be a falsely accused young woman, is brought in for a mugshot by two officers. She first attempts to avoid the camera’s gaze, and, when overpowered and manhandled, contorts her face to ruin the photograph. However, her small rebellion proves futile; she was already being recorded, objectified, mapped, and co-opted by the Godhead of the director. As her body and image are repurposed and transmuted ad infinitum, the filmic universe also explodes into a supernova. What is born out of this suffering and manipulation is another example of our sublime medium and modern muse. She will not be last the Leda, and she may not even be the first. Who is the guilty party here? Is beauty a chimera in traditional cinema? Has the ephemeral cinema of the attractions and distractions era gone anywhere?
A visual and musical elaboration on the Crab Canon in which the theme of intersecting beams is played against itself going backwards.
Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.