The Cup and the Lip is a complex and challenging picture that will stimulate adventurous filmmakers for years to come. Although its imagery is too dense, varied and fast-moving to be thoroughly parsed after one viewing, the film appears to be a regretful and perhaps sardonic essay on human frailty--and on the effort to stave off chaos by means of political and religious institutions, which carry their own dangers of social control and mental manipulation. - David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1998.
The Cup and the Lip is a complex and challenging picture that will stimulate adventurous filmmakers for years to come. Although its imagery is too dense, varied and fast-moving to be thoroughly parsed after one viewing, the film appears to be a regretful and perhaps sardonic essay on human frailty--and on the effort to stave off chaos by means of political and religious institutions, which carry their own dangers of social control and mental manipulation. - David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1998.
1986-10-20
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Charlie, a wandering tramp, becomes a circus handyman - soon the star of the show - and falls in love with the circus owner's stepdaughter.
Using rapidly edited, superimposed images of plants, trees, water, the sun and the moon, Incantation weaves a dynamic tapestry of organic forms and textures, combining its images with a fierce rhythmic intensity so as to suggest a kind of natural force. The film was shot entirely in the camera, in 8mm, according to a pre-arranged, music-like score, and then blown up to 16mm using a home-made optical printer. The accompanying sound track, a chant taken from Islamic liturgy, is breath-based and brings the film into the form of a prayer. Written by re:voir. - Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
City of Wax is a 1934 American short documentary film produced by Horace and Stacy Woodard about the life of a bee. It won the Oscar at the 7th Academy Awards in 1935 for Best Short Subject (Novelty). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2007.
Bosom Friends is a 1934 American short film produced by E. W. Hammons. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 7th Academy Awards in 1934 for Best Short Subject (Novelty). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with UCLA Film & Television Archive in 2013.
Academy Award nominated short film. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division in 2012.
Double or Nothing is a 1936 American short musical comedy film directed by Joseph Henabery. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 9th Academy Awards in 1936 for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Library of Congress. Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division in 2013.
Dummy Ache is a 1936 American short comedy film directed by Leslie Goodwins. An assuming husband, suspicious of his wife, follows her for the day. Misunderstandings, mishaps, and hijinks ensue. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 9th Academy Awards in 1936 for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Library of Congress. Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division in 2013.
A wealthy landlord lives a decadent life with his wife and son. His passion – his wife would calls it his addiction – is music, and he spends a great deal of his fortune on concerts held for the locals in his magnificent music room. He feels threatened by his neighbour, a commoner who has attained riches through business dealings. His passion for music and quest for social respect are his undoing, as he sacrifices his family and wealth trying to retain it.
An overview of John F. Kennedy's political career. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive, in partnership with Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., in 2014.
A short film about a mother and her son, she teaches him life skills later on the son gets niked by a man so the young donkey can be his work slave and his mother saves him. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2013.
Busy Little Bears is a 1939 American short family film directed by John A. Haeseler. The film follows three bear cubs are observed exploring the forests of the Sierra Nevadas, encountering other wildlife, and invading the kitchen of a local ranch house. It won an Oscar at the 12th Academy Awards in 1940 for Best Short Subject (One-Reel). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with UCLA Film & Television Archive in 2013.
"The quote is Joseph Conrad answering a critic who found his books too long. Conrad replied that he could write a novel on the inside of a match-book cover, thus (as above), but that he "preferred to elaborate." The "Life" of the film is scratched on black leader. The "elaboration" of color tonalities is as the mind's eye responds to hieroglyph." - S.B. (Note: it seems possible that Brakhage misattributed this quote, which appears to be from William Faulkner and/or W. Somerset Maugham). Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2006.
"The full 35-millimeter frame allows for more detail and diversity than Brakhage's customary narrower gauges. In the first section, multicolored blobs contrast with fuzzy photographed lights; in the third, flickering specks become hundreds of tiny rods and later cracks in paint. Rhythmic complexity has long been a characteristic of Brakhage's work, but the series takes polyphony to new heights by creating different movements in different portions of the frame; there's a sense of shapes being generated and reabsorbed in a cosmic vision of eternal change." -- Fred Camper, Chicago Reader. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
This hand-painted, step-printed film begins with several seconds of blank white (interrupted by red and brief electric yellow) and then proceeds to multiply flecked earth and rock shapes and root-like forms which seem to suck horizontally inward and upward midst phosphorescent greens and blues increasingly flecked with light-yellows giving way to tree-top branch likenesses taking oblique shape against a phosphor sky. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
This, painted in the hospital while recovering from cancer surgery in 1996, is - it seems to me - very related to De Kooning's Alzheimer's paintings. The mind, here, is seeking a "blank" and/or holding fast to tendrils of meaning which are stripped so bare as to be purely reflective of flesh tissue and irregular strands of cells. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
CRICKET REQUIEM is a hand-painted and elaborately step-printed film which juxtaposes bent, sometimes saw-tooth, scratch shapes multiply colored in pastels on a white field juxtaposed with emerging, and sometimes retreating, bi-pack imagery of the faintest imaginable lines (solarized lines) etched in brown-black. This interplay continues until the latter imagery begins to dominate with increasing recurrence. Then suddenly there's a vibrant mix of thick black lines (which is "echoed" once again near end of film) that alters the increasingly colored bent lines and their thin-stringy accompaniment, with rhythms which suggest a stately and emphatic end. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.
After being discredited as a coward, a 19th century seaman lives for only one purpose: to redeem himself. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000.
A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal.
Bambi is nibbling the grass, unaware of the upcoming encounter with Godzilla. Who will win when they finally meet? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.
Bay Area filmmakers and Canyon Cinema co-founders Ben Van Meter and Bruce Conner were invited to L.A. to talk about Underground Film on the Art Linkletter Show. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.