Jack Goldstein – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1975, 16.2MB, 2:10)
An endlessly cyclical Hollywood, summed up in two minutes,
over thirty years ago. Still relevant and all too real.
Category Archives: historical
Jerome Hill
Film Portrait (1972, 31MB, 11:45 min.)
La Cartomancienne (1932, 13MB, 12 min.)
This is a memoir and the last film made by artist and filmmaker Jerome Hill.
I also found ‘La Cartomancienne’, one of his earliest film experiments.
By Mica
Semiotics of a Kitchen
Martha Rosler – Semiotics of a Kitchen (1975, 18.3MB, 6:29)
An A-Z look at the tools of a kitchen, of domesticity,
of the self in the midst of frustrated ennui.
Historically significant feminist performance art that reminds us,
“When the woman speaks, she names her own oppression.”
Rosler is one of my favorites.
Abbie Hoffman and gefilte fish
Abbie Making Gefilte Fish (1973, 156.4MB, 21:04)
Footage of Abbie Hoffman making gefilte fish with Laura Cavestani
(who made the video) in his kitchen, 1973.
Like Abbie, I think art is in the everyday, and it sure is a fun
(and rather informative) twenty minutes if you’ve got it to spare.
Art for Abbie was education, constant revolution, evolution, and living for free.
Art and freedom were one in the same, inextricable from each other.
We miss you man.
Hanns Eisler – ‘Composing for the Films’
‘White Flood’ – clip 1 (1940-2, 1.1 MB, 30 sec.)
‘A Child Went Forth’ – clip (1940-2, 1.4 MB, 30 sec.)
‘White Flood’ – clip 2 (1940-2, 661 KB, 29 sec.)
Easily the most interesting of all Brecht’s composer collaborators
& in flat contradiction to the current myth spread by those
who dislike his politics, by far the better composer than the rather
dull Weill, Hanns Eisler’s keen intellect turned to questions of film in his
exile in the USA in the early forties.
Under the auspices of the New School & funded by the Rockefeller foundation
Eisler conducted an intensive investigation of the relationship between
film & music , often involving him writing new music to already existing footage.
You can see some of this footage here – but what you really need to do is to listen.
There is no-one who could not learn something from the amazing way Eisler
deploys music here.
After the project, Eisler went on to write, with Theodore Adorno,
himself no slouch intellectually (& also a practicing composer),
one of the key books on music & the movies –‘Composing for the Films’
These clips come from the website for a new edition of the book
released with a companion DVD documenting much of the Rockefeller experimentation.
Indispensable.
‘Erection’ by John Lennon & Yoko Ono
Erection (1971, 180MB, 18:06 min.)
A nineteen-minute film by John and Yoko, which was made in London during
1970 and 1971. When John had heard that the London International Hotel was
to be built in Kensington, he sought permission to film its entire construction.
Once he’d obtained it he contacted the photographer Iain MacMillan and asked
him to take a series of photographs of the construction. MacMillan had a stills
camera and filmed the erection of the hotel from a fixed position for a period
of eighteen months.
The stills were presented in sequence in the film, which ended with a shot of the
completed hotel where all the lights were then turned off, leaving a black screen.
On the soundtrack Yoko sang two songs, ‘Airmale’ and ‘You’, using tapes of recordings
of Joe Jones Tone Deaf Music Co., which was, in fact, a number of toy percussion
instruments that played themselves, a squeaky style of sound devised by a former
associate of Yoke’s Fluxus days, Joe Jones. The hotel was situated at 147 Cromwell
Road and later became the London Swallow Hotel.
British Beach Hut Miscellany
British Beach Hut Miscellany(2006, 5.2MB, 1:36 min)
Made by Giles Perkins. Shot on Super 8 & digitally edited.
English pastoral loveliness with a conceptual/formalist twist,
which resolves to… English pastoral loveliness.
Lovely!
Celia Cooley – Occupy DC Interviews 10/10/2011
Occupy DC Interviews 10/10/2011 (2011, 73MB, 58 sec)
Demonstrating what we all might have said rhetorically, but really demonstrating it –
that a smart seven year old (with a little tech help from her parents)
can do a better job than any of the official media, Celia Cooley interviews
Occupy DC participants in a piece that both delights and makes one fiercely
proud to be one of the 99%.
Great job.
Lumière – La sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière à Lyon
La sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière à Lyon (1895, 2MB, 46 sec.)
The year is 1895. The “Hangar” was the first set in the history of Cinematography and
can be seen here in “La Sortie de l’usine Lumière”, Lumière’s first film.
from the fantastic site – Institut Lumière.
Joan Brossa – Fi
Joan Brossa, the Catalan poet, artist, performer and polymath,
who died in 1998, deserves to be more widely
known in the rest of the world.
I’ve often thought his work, in particular the visual
poems, prefigured much of the art of the early days
of the net (but mostly better: terser, wittier, riskier –
I think Brossa would have loved the net).
This elegant & delightful performance ( ‘Fi’ is Catalan
for ‘End’, in this context The End) was recorded
in Barcelona eight months before his death.
It requires a little patience; the reward being that
it can be viewed many more than one time, so it
seems like an appropriate thing to leave you with
over the summer.
Remember we’re always delighted to look at new work,
so if you’re making moving image yourself,
or you happen across great stuff don’t hesitate
to send us links.
We’re back on Monday, September the 26th – in
the meantime we wish you all a happy and relaxing summer.