Zoomer (trailer) (2010, 26MB, 2:24 min.)

ZOOMER is a feature-length documentary about the life of Mary
DeBoutez Zellmer-Fenoglio, an eccentric and charismatic owner
of ‘Zoomer’s Treasures’ in Kansas, USA.
ZOOMER is Sam Huntley‘s first feature-length film and was entirely self-funded.

clip #1 (1995, 7.6MB, 32 sec.)

clip #2 (1995, 3.2MB, 14 sec.)

clip #3 (1995, 4.1MB, 17 sec.)

Some lovely footage of the great free improv guitarist Derek Bailey,
who died in 2005, working with be-bop hoofer Will Gaines.
As with so much Bailey did, it seems at first deeply
odd & then, in equal measure, wonderful.
Important to understand this wasn’t some sort of gimmick:
Gaines had known Bailey since the sixties & although much of his
fame was garnered firmly in the mainstream, he has spent a great
deal of time working with cutting edge improvisors.
Enjoy two wonderful artists at the top of their game.
From European Free Improvisation.

videoconstructions2 (1978, 5MB, 1:16 min.)

The Chair (1980, 36MB, 9:54 min.)

Buky Schwartz (1932-2009), an Israeli sculptor and video artist
who passed away last year, was known for his deceptive videos
that interplay between illusory appearance and the actual ‘reality’.
The 2 vids here were exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York in 1981.
From the splendid Videoart.net

Atakti (196?, 11MB, 2:23 min)

Utterly compelling clip from a 1960s German documentary featuring a
spine tingling live performance in a Piraeus taverna by the great
rembetiko singer Markos Vamvakaris.
I could watch & listen all day.

PS I think atakti means ‘bad’ or ‘naughty’

untitled 1 (2010, 630kb, 7 sec.)

untitled 2 (2010, 1MB, 10 sec.)

trophy sports (2010, 768kb, 8 sec.)

three miniatures from nick vitou (ormo).
all cellphone uploads to facebook.
all shot on location while running replay for a local sports television network.
..DNF chancellor with a gold eye.

& check out his music endeavors at LAPS.

Private Charges ( 2010, 51MB, 9:59)

Another bit of pointed fun from the team who brought you
the original Dr Hairy movie.
Made me laugh a lot, especially the superb timing and the
gratuitous cruelty to toy animals.
Shouldn’t need saying, especially with this one, but, US
viewers, please see the disclaimer on the original post.

Opto-Isolator (2007, 6MB, 46 sec.)

“Opto-Isolator inverts the condition of spectatorship by exploring the questions:
“What if artworks could know how we were looking at them? And, given this
knowledge, how might they respond to us?” The sculpture presents a solitary
mechatronic blinking eye, at human scale, which responds to the gaze of visitors
with a variety of psychosocial eye-contact behaviors that are at once familiar and
unnerving. Among other forms of feedback, Opto-Isolator looks its viewer directly
in the eye; appears to intently study its viewer’s face; looks away coyly if it is stared
at for too long; and blinks precisely one second after its visitor blinks.”

By Golan Levin and Greg Baltus.

Spacy ( 1981, 14MB, 2:27)

The other day,on a whim, I bought Takashi Ito’s collected works on DVD
from the BFI shop. I’d never heard of him before.
I’m so glad I did. It is utterly compelling and remarkable work.
Spacy is an early piece and the clip here is neither complete
not particularly good quality but it does give you a taste of Ito’s early
– almost formalist – style.
There’s such delight in seeing how this broadens into the flexible,
confidently handled and singular idiom of the later pieces, where a quite
musical rigor in the formal structuring is never absent but which
also underpins a beautifully ambiguous and rich expressivity.
The whole set was one of those all too rare tingle-down-the-spine
revelations which I gulped down in a couple of sittings.
This is outstanding & important work – I urge people to become acquainted with it.

Deaf Swedish Beaver TV (2010, 9MB, 1:03 min)

Sooooo un-PC on just soooo many levels
and quite quite wonderful too, a great Lumière from
DVblog’s own Brittany Shoot.

The Lost Shoe (2010, 16MB, 4:35 min)

Martha Deed, one of our favourite people, & co-founder with
the much missed Millie Niss of the fantastic Sporkworld Microblog,
which we’ve raved about before & which we can’t recommend too
highly, has a paper publication coming out, a book of poems, for which
she created this chilling and beautifully made video “trailer”.

Watch the trailer then