Robert Todd – Ground Play

ground play
Ground Play (extract) (2009, 64 MB, 5:15 min)

I stumbled across Robert Todd’s work by accident & I’m glad that I did.
Judging by the extracts on his site, one of which we’re posting here, he will bear
a good deal of further investigation.

Here I love the use of oblique angles, cropping &c. to create a world both highly abstracted
yet naggingly familiar (and very beautiful).

There’s also an interesting dynamic going on between the probing camerwork & the
thoughtful and restrained editing.

There’s an interview with Todd here and you can buy DVDs of his work .

The Insomniac City Cycles – Ran Slavin

the_insomniac_city_cycles
The Insomniac City Cycles Trailer (2004-2009, 60 MB, 1:56 min)
“A man wakes up with a bullet wound in an abandoned parking garage in Tel Aviv,
having lost his memory and a gun. As the man struggles to recall his recent past,
a woman wakes up in a Shanghai hotel from a similar dream.
A fragmented conversation with a stranger on the phone sets off a strange exploration
between the two.
Tel Aviv and Shanghai in a movie within a movie and a dream within a dream..
..In The Insomniac City Cycles Ran Slavin explores a world with internal logic built
on the axis of memory the real and the fantastic.
It is a travel through dream structures, events and un-foldings that inventively blend
mystery, neo-noir and science fiction genres with experimental film making techniques.”

Directed Written and Produced by Ran Slavin.

John Berryman – Dream Song #14

watchingthem
Dream Song #14 (1967, 8MB, 1:43 min)


Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

Another Dream Song.
For details see original post

Marisa Olson – 2 videos

Dark Stars
Dark Stars (2006, 6.9MB, 1:30 min)

From Here
From Here (2006, 29MB, 4 min)

Two rather attractive & intriguing pieces by Marisa Olson
made at a 2006 residency at the Experimental Television Center.

Said Marisa:
“Both are made using a combination of analog & digital processes
and Dark Stars is almost completely analog.. but
then again, both appropriate found material from the internet.
From Here is the music video for Zach Layton’s remix of my song of the
same name. Dark Stars uses samples from one of those old VHS video
games”.

More from Marisa on DVblog here.