jack smith-normal love

the legendary filmmaker's only 'feature' length film from 1963

orson welles- 'the land of the basques'

Orson Welles- The Hearts of Age

The big man's first film. Not surprisingly, it's an incredibly weird and evocative short with heavy surrealist influence.

under the volcano

happy under the volcano day! november 2nd is the setting for malcolm lowry's most famous novel, a singular and lyrical exploration of loneliness, alcoholism, and attempted redemption.

tal national

the last movie

"spaces between spaces" from dennis hopper's masterpiece "the last movie"

The Fantastic Phenakistoscope

Invented in the 1820's by the Belgain Joseph Plateau, the phenakistoscope was a device designed to provide startling optic illusions, some of the earliest animations in fact. From wikipedia: "The phenakistoscope used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc's center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture. A variant of it had two discs, one with slits and one with pictures; this was slightly more unwieldy but needed no mirror. Unlike the zoetrope and its successors, the phenakistoscope could only practically be used by one person at a time."

RIP Cal Smith

Stan Brakhage tapes

First of all I would like to apologize for being away for so long. I decided that it was worth to start posting ramblings here again. They may be random missives, deposits, daydreams, and ruminations, but this forum and this particular form of web site seems the most practical and democratic. Recently, in between a pair of rather lengthy tours, I came across this archive (of course credit to the amazing folks at Ubu Web) of Stan Brakhage radio programs from the early eighties. They were originally broadcast on the radio affiliate of the University of Colorado. These are truly a revelation. I have always been a fan of Brakhage but in a way my appreciation of his vision has been from an aloof viewpoint. I didn't have a voice there to guide me and give some context as to what made the man tick so to speak. Yet with these radio broadcasts we have that, and what emerges from Brakhage's programs are a commanding and totally unique synthesis of music, literature, philosophy, artistic purpose. I urge you to listen to all these broadcasts. I discovered them precisely at a point where I was beginning to feel a bit creatively untethered and weary and listening to this calm, wise voice from the past reenergized me. http://www.ubu.com/sound/brakhage.html

Freakin at the freaker's ball

Pictures from a 1972 Rothschild ball. When the goin gets weird, the rich get really weird.