Breathdeath by Stan Vanderbeek (1963).
At the Exprmntl 3 film competition at Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium in 1963, Breathdeath tied for 2nd place with Gregory Markopoulos‘s Twice a Man. Both men took home $2,000 in prize money.
In An Introduction to the American Underground Film, Sheldon Renan classifies Breathdeath as a “protest film,” which was a minority of underground film genre at the time. Renan also describes Breathdeath as a “collage of film technique” and considers it Vanderbeek’s best film. Throughout the book, Renan gives different completion years, both 1963-64 and just 1964. Although, in the film’s on-screen text, Vanderbeek gave the film a 1963 copyright. (See below.) (Stephen Dwoskin’s Film Is also gives Breathdeath a completion year of 1964; as does the film’s listing on the Film-makers’ Coop website.)
According to a document published in Scott MacDonald’s Canyon Cinema, in 1970, Breathdeath was one of five films acquired by the Australian National Library’s study collection.
At the Exprmntl 3 film competition at Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium in 1963, Breathdeath tied for 2nd place with Gregory Markopoulos‘s Twice a Man. Both men took home $2,000 in prize money.
In An Introduction to the American Underground Film, Sheldon Renan classifies Breathdeath as a “protest film,” which was a minority of underground film genre at the time. Renan also describes Breathdeath as a “collage of film technique” and considers it Vanderbeek’s best film. Throughout the book, Renan gives different completion years, both 1963-64 and just 1964. Although, in the film’s on-screen text, Vanderbeek gave the film a 1963 copyright. (See below.) (Stephen Dwoskin’s Film Is also gives Breathdeath a completion year of 1964; as does the film’s listing on the Film-makers’ Coop website.)
According to a document published in Scott MacDonald’s Canyon Cinema, in 1970, Breathdeath was one of five films acquired by the Australian National Library’s study collection.
- 10/8/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Quixote by Bruce Baillie. Finished most likely in 1965, but sources place year range 1964-1967. In Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney says the film was “revised” in 1967; while in his “Movie Journal” column, Jonas Mekas wrote that the “final version” of Quixote was screened in New York City in 1968. An article in the Film Culture triple issue 67-68-69 also makes the claims that the film was “finished” (year not given), then revised in 1967; with the final version finally reaching NYC in 1968.
The version of Quixote embedded above comes via Bruce Baillie‘s own YouTube account; and, according to some new end credits, is a digital remastering of the original.
In the book Canyon Cinema, author Scott MacDonald reprints a letter written by Baillie published in the May 1965 issue of Canyon Cinema’s Cinemanews newsletter in which Baillie discusses the filming of Quixote. He writes about traveling through Nevada; Montana; Alberta,...
The version of Quixote embedded above comes via Bruce Baillie‘s own YouTube account; and, according to some new end credits, is a digital remastering of the original.
In the book Canyon Cinema, author Scott MacDonald reprints a letter written by Baillie published in the May 1965 issue of Canyon Cinema’s Cinemanews newsletter in which Baillie discusses the filming of Quixote. He writes about traveling through Nevada; Montana; Alberta,...
- 7/10/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Dec. 11, 2012
Price: DVD $79.95, Blu-ray $79.95
Studio: Criterion
Filmmaker and artist, Godfrey Reggio is best known for his galvanizing trio of documentary-like “moviescape” films Koyaanisquatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, which comprise The Qatsi Trilogy.
Astonishingly photographed, and featuring unforgettably hypnotic musical scores by Philip Glass (Mishima), the three films are immersive sensory experiences that meditate on the havoc humankind’s fascination with technology has wreaked on our world. From 1983’s Koyaanisqatsi (the title is a Hopi word that means “life out of balance”) to 1988’s Powaqqatsi (“life in transformation”) to 2002’s Naqoyqatsi (“life as war”), Reggio takes viewers on a journey from the ancient to the contemporary, from nature to industry and back again, all the while keeping our eyes wide with wonder.
Technology overruns the world in 2002's Naqoyqatsi.
Here’s a breakdown on the three films:
Koyaanisquatsi (1983)
A sensation when it was released in the early 1980s.
Price: DVD $79.95, Blu-ray $79.95
Studio: Criterion
Filmmaker and artist, Godfrey Reggio is best known for his galvanizing trio of documentary-like “moviescape” films Koyaanisquatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, which comprise The Qatsi Trilogy.
Astonishingly photographed, and featuring unforgettably hypnotic musical scores by Philip Glass (Mishima), the three films are immersive sensory experiences that meditate on the havoc humankind’s fascination with technology has wreaked on our world. From 1983’s Koyaanisqatsi (the title is a Hopi word that means “life out of balance”) to 1988’s Powaqqatsi (“life in transformation”) to 2002’s Naqoyqatsi (“life as war”), Reggio takes viewers on a journey from the ancient to the contemporary, from nature to industry and back again, all the while keeping our eyes wide with wonder.
Technology overruns the world in 2002's Naqoyqatsi.
Here’s a breakdown on the three films:
Koyaanisquatsi (1983)
A sensation when it was released in the early 1980s.
- 10/3/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Second #6909, 115:09
Detective Williams arrives, too late. Everyone dead is dead. Jeffrey is alive, but not because of the Law. Sandy, behind her father, behind the gun, swoons, electrified and ready to be taken by Jeffrey. This post is as good a post as any to suggest that, just beneath its surface, Blue Velvet is a “trash” film. It’s so overloaded with references to Hollywood’s traditions that always threatens to implode in on itself, perhaps nowhere else more poignantly than in this frame, which evokes everything from noir to the “woman’s picture” to the classic crime film. In Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies, Scott MacDonald writes about avant-garde “trash” films of the 60s and 70s:
The films designated by the term [“trash”] develop recognizable narratives, with characters, sets, costumes—all the fundamental elements of Hollywood movie-making; but either because the filmmakers lack the economic means for achieving industry-level production values,...
Detective Williams arrives, too late. Everyone dead is dead. Jeffrey is alive, but not because of the Law. Sandy, behind her father, behind the gun, swoons, electrified and ready to be taken by Jeffrey. This post is as good a post as any to suggest that, just beneath its surface, Blue Velvet is a “trash” film. It’s so overloaded with references to Hollywood’s traditions that always threatens to implode in on itself, perhaps nowhere else more poignantly than in this frame, which evokes everything from noir to the “woman’s picture” to the classic crime film. In Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies, Scott MacDonald writes about avant-garde “trash” films of the 60s and 70s:
The films designated by the term [“trash”] develop recognizable narratives, with characters, sets, costumes—all the fundamental elements of Hollywood movie-making; but either because the filmmakers lack the economic means for achieving industry-level production values,...
- 8/7/2012
- by Nicholas Rombes
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Second #6486, 108:06
Inside Dorothy’s apartment Jeffrey surveys the carnage. The television set, its screen cracked. Detective Gordon, the Man in Yellow, somewhere in between dead and alive, and perhaps, at the outer edges of possibility, hooked up to the television. Lynch has talked about his desire to make a painting that “would really be able to move” as a motivation for making his first films, and during the apartment scene the screen does indeed become like a canvas, its objects staged and still, with occasional movement, some fevered dream of an automated wax-museum.
Is Blue Velvet an avant-garde film? Was it ever?
In his classic study Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies (1993) Scott MacDonald wrote that
The mainstream cinema (and its sibling television) is so fundamental a part of our public and private experiences, that even when filmmakers produce and exhibit alternative cinematic forms, the dominant cinema is implied by the alternatives.
Inside Dorothy’s apartment Jeffrey surveys the carnage. The television set, its screen cracked. Detective Gordon, the Man in Yellow, somewhere in between dead and alive, and perhaps, at the outer edges of possibility, hooked up to the television. Lynch has talked about his desire to make a painting that “would really be able to move” as a motivation for making his first films, and during the apartment scene the screen does indeed become like a canvas, its objects staged and still, with occasional movement, some fevered dream of an automated wax-museum.
Is Blue Velvet an avant-garde film? Was it ever?
In his classic study Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies (1993) Scott MacDonald wrote that
The mainstream cinema (and its sibling television) is so fundamental a part of our public and private experiences, that even when filmmakers produce and exhibit alternative cinematic forms, the dominant cinema is implied by the alternatives.
- 7/13/2012
- by Nicholas Rombes
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The promotional materials for Cinema 16, the groundbreaking film society founded in 1947 by Amos Vogel, advertised Films You Cannot See Elsewhere. But for Vogel, who died peacefully Tuesday at the age of 91 in the apartment off Washington Square Park where he had lived since the fifties, assembling a film program was an art in itself. Inspired by the dialectical clash of Einsenstein’s montage, Vogel set avant-garde shorts next to a documentary about South American ants; a program from January 1959, reproduced in Scott MacDonald’s “Cinema 16: Documents Towards a History of the Film Society,” featured Buster Keaton’s “The General” and Stan Brakhage’s “The Wonder Ring.” Asked on the occasion of a 2004 tribute what he intended to produce through such sometimes jarring juxtapositions, Vogel answered simply: “Film culture.” Vogel’s influence continued after Cinema 16 shut its doors in 1963. That same...
- 4/25/2012
- by Sam Adams
- Indiewire
This Week’s Must Look: The Strange Beauty Film Festival, held last month in Durham, North Carolina, sent love letters to the numerous Winnipeg, Manitoba filmmakers who screened work there. What an incredibly lovely gesture! Some of the recipients include many Bad Lit faves, such as Jaimz Asmundson, Leslie Supnet and Aaron Zeghers.Plazm has a lengthy interview up with Portland area filmmaker Vanessa Renwick about her career, specifically about how she’s incorporated the city into it and vice versa.Robert Maier has photographic evidence of a violent scene cut out of Polyester, featuring Divine being mauled by members of the press. Also, a production office photo at the same film.In anticipation of the upcoming Hollis Frampton DVD by Criterion, Making Light of It has scanned and posted Scott MacDonald’s interview with him in A Critical Cinema.Documentary filmmaker Jessica Oreck has started a new short film project: Mysteries of the Vernacular.
- 3/11/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This Week’s Must Look At: The artist book Don’t Kill the Weatherman by Martha Colburn has an online photograph preview and it looks stunning! I love Martha’s animation, but it always moves so quickly that it’s tough to savor the actual art. But, now I can! The above borrowed image is from frames from the film Spiders in Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical, the first Colburn film I ever saw way back in 2000. (If you go to the photo set, you can find details on how to purchase this limited edition.)Craig Baldwin has published issue #22 of Otherzine. You can read the whole thing here. But, two highlights are: An interview with Dominic Gagnon, who is seeking to save “censored” online videos; and curator Brenda Contreras reviews Sylvia Schedelbauer’s found footage film, Sounding Glass.This one’s for Canyon Cinema members only: But if you are one,...
- 3/4/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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