Category Archives: historical

Delpha Hudson – A Walk with Jane Austen

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A Walk with Jane Austen (1999, 144MB, 12:20 min)

‘the work is about exploring the veracity of history and of time,
and its constructs (in this case especially the notion of
“bodice-ripping” romance genres).
Playing with text and in-authenticity, the intention was to engage
an audience with notions of historical construction of women;
their facts and fictions, and the possibility of re-visioning histories.
– Delpha Hudson

Engaging hybrid of site specific performance and movie making,
the somewhat improvisatory quality lending it all a pleasantly
languid & unhurried air.
At the very end the sun joins in to striking effect & I love the rogue
arm at our right as the spectators leave.
Hudson is a charismatic & commanding performer –
we’ll have another of her performance pieces here in the Autumn.

Cutting Edge Cinema

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Lunch
A Tough Dance (1902, 7.1MB, 47 sec.)

Lunch
Bicycle Trick Riding (1899, 5.5MB, 37 sec.)

Lunch
Three Acrobats (1899, 5.4MB, 36 sec.)

Three exhilarating chunks of early movie making from the
Library of Congress online collection of variety stage motion pictures.
I particularly love the deeply strange A ‘Tough’ Dance.
There’s also a great early animation collection on the LOC site.

‘Un Chien Andalou’ – Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí

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Un chien andalou (1929, 156MB, 15:40 min.)

This is just the source.
Can you imagine Cocteau, Deren, later Hitchcock & Cronenberg
without this?
Oh..more:- the whole of cinema would have a great gaping bloody gap
in it & what was left would be dull dull dull & Black Francis wouldn’t have been
able to write ‘Debaser’.
It simply prised open the language.
Afterwards, Bunuel went on to make some of the sharpest, most provocative
& disturbing films of the 20th century & Dali went on to
…well… be Dali.

Carlos Gavito & Maria Plazaola

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Carlos Gavito & Maria Plazaola
Gavito & Plazaola (n/k, 13.5MB, 3:44 min.)

‘The secret of tango is in this moment of improvisation that
happens between step and step. It is to make the impossible thing
possible: to dance silence. This is essential to learn in tangodance,
the real dance, that of the silence, of following the melody.’
– Carlos Gavito

Watch the late Carlos Gavito & his partner Maria Plazaola
play havoc with the space time continuum in this extraordinary
piece in which time slows down, speeds up & actually comes to a
halt at least once.
Mesmerizing.

[ Found on this very strange tango site with lots more videos]

Ladislas Starewitch – Le Lion Devenu Vieux

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Le Lion Devenu Vieux
Le Lion Devenu Vieux (1932, 3.5MB, 1:04 sec.)

Ladislas Starewitch is often credited with inventing stop motion animation
as we know it, though so are several other people. It depends on what fits
into your definition of stop motion.
Certainly he was probably the first to actually make little figures and move
them frame by frame in an attempt to duplicate lifelike movement of actual
living things. it was because he was filming beetles and found that the hot
lights made them lethargic, so he made his own little beetles asrealistically
as possible and animated them instead.
This gave birth to further projects with very lifelike but sometimes partially
anthropomorphic (human-like) animals.
from – Darkstrider.

By Mica. (thanks Adam)

Crystal Stilts/Kate Thomas – Departure

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Departure
Departure (2009, 34 MB, 4:24 min)

I love this video for two, apparently almost entirely independent
(but maybe, in some strange, deep way, connected) reasons.
First – the music is great. I listen very little popular music these
days (which is why I’m 2 years late with this) as most of it, even
(especially!) the so called indie stuff gives the impression of
having been focus-grouped into bland submission before being let
limply loose not to offend anyone.
This, contrariwise, oozes life & not-giving-a-fuck from every note
(especially the splendidly slightly out of tune vocals; but it’s all a joy).
Secondly, director of the video, Kate Thomas, about whom I know
nothing and could find out no more, had the totally brilliant idea
of simply stringing together some footage of French students
and workers standing up for themselves against the riot cops in 68.
If this all doesn’t make you weep with barely suppressed joy please
check your pulse.