This burning celluloid montage film presents the mythic iconography
of the films of Georges Méliès
-- a dreamlike terrain, a grab-bag of magician's surprises, a cornucopia
of players that proceed from the imagination of that "magician" of cinema
- announced by the opening motif, "the expanding head."
These incidents are presented/framed within the graphic
form of burning frames, each image-shot erupting and being displaced
by the following shot. This is an essay featuring discontinuity and
surprise. Images in this piece were compiled from approximately 30
films by George Méliès, most notably
'A Trip to the Moon (1902)' -- (A.R.)
GHOST:
IMAGE encompasses that tradition of "fantastic" films
that includes Dada, Cubism, Surrealism, Expressionism, Poetic Realism,
Symbolism, and eventually the horror genre (and of course Fritz
Lang's Metropolis ).
Its formal design, the mirror image, creates a denial
of axis and screen direction,with the result that the viewer must read
"through the images." At times, the mirror images are reduced to their
Rorschach component, and complemented by the presence of fragmented
poetry (after T.S. Eliot and automatic writing), a metonymic realm suggesting
"automatic disclosures" and unconscious correspondences in the developing
discourse.
The familiar myths of woman as 'madonna' / 'victim' /
'temptress', and 'redemption through knowledge and science,' 'fear of
the undead," and 'fear of the irrational,' form the signposts of this
historical and cultural terrain.
Contains excerpts from aproximately 20 surrealist,
dada, horror, films. (A.R.)
Individually featured in international
exhibitions, retrospectives.
One 16mm film print available for collectors at $850 USD
Condition: Used / projected print
STORMING THE WINTER PALACE
16 min. color sound 1984 - 16mm Release Print with optical sound track
This last visual essay focuses on montage and the dialectics of Sergei
Eisenstein's films, indicating their influence as cornerstones of
silent cinema and as major contributions to the evolution of later cinema.
Eisenstein's work in the areas of non-verbal signification and allegorical-revolutionary
montage is subjected to three "framing" processes: inversion of chronological
narrative, fragmentation and repetition of selected montage passages,
and the interrogation of selected Oktober sequences
by the application of 'saccadic eye movement' (animated) techniques.
Contains sequences from 'Battleship Potempkin' and 'Oktober'
by Eisenstein.
Spoken text from writings of Benjamin Buchloh,
and Soviet Formalist sources (freely adapted).
One 16mm film print available for collectors at $1250 USD
Condition: NEW / never projected
Earlier avant-garde films from 170's:
THE MOON AT EVERNIGHT...
9 min. color sound 1973 - 16mm Release Print w/ optical sound track
This short film is comprised of image cycles and haunting sound passages, each cycled preceeded by a wolf's howl in the music track. Like lava pouring into the screen, the optically printed and re-printed frames glow with content almost at the threshold of figurative recognition. As each cycle repeats in variation of image and motion, the "riders in the night" become rescued in our eyes from ghost like patterns.
An experimental film 'soudscape video' from 1973 and optical printing / analog videosynthesizer era. The 'band' plays in the mind.
"Built on the subliminal manipulation of forms and motion, this film's elusive, fiery images flare up and die back into the night void in recurring cycles, like the fixed but fragmentary elements of some forgotten myth or spell. Violent lyricism and lycanthropy - an optically printed spatial/temporal examination of a violent B-grade adventure film with horror-film sound elements. This series of image cycles abstracts and deconstructs the linear (melodramatic) narrative of television. " (A.R. catalog entry)
One 16mm film print available for collectors at $850 USD
Condition: Used / projected several times
