SCFZ

rischka wrote: ↑Mon Apr 04, 2022 2:06 pm Cool, I think we talked before about France trying to exorcise its demons of the occupation and I think it fits that pattern. We've done bad but can redeem ourselves. I liked the doctor character especially in this regard

Race movie, y'know? Cruddy in execution, but not necessarily any worse than the feeblest Monograms. Looked at first like a colorized version of Sadie McKee/Rain, but they didn't end up following that ploit thread very diligently.

Looks like Gertie-gal is slotted into that "individual woman symbolising an entire culture/nation/group" construct -- all the male characters either want to partay with her or police her -- but I find that strategy doesn't bother me so much when she's representing for a marginal group and not for the status quo.

Also, transgender representation, as we call it today, with director Spencer Williams playing "the voodoo woman." Two--spirit shamanism FTW!

sally wrote: ↑Fri Apr 01, 2022 11:07 pm suita warszawska - tadeusz makarczyński

viewable here: https://35mm.online/en/vod/documentary/warsaw-suite

short sweet doc showing life resilient re-emerging from bombed out mariupol, sorry, warsaw...

sally wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:37 pm proud city: a plan for london - ralph keene

LOL! am proud! whereas the warsaw one was a melodic soviet-style ode to renewal, this one was dry, dogmatic (it was made as entreaty to londoners to please accept the council planner's utopic vision, warsovians not visibly given that choice and had already started building, don't think this london plan was ever fully realised) and the central over-explained premise is that actually the blitz did us a favour because london was SHIT beforehand and if it hadn't been bombed we'd have had to tear it down anyway

https://vimeo.com/123147030

— London grew up without any plan or order. That's why there are all those bad and ugly things.
— And that brings us to another aspect of London. London as a machine!

neon ovalis wrote: ↑Sun Apr 10, 2022 9:00 pm i have no expectations, am not judgemental, and am prone to watching bad & good movies alike!
really liked these two movies as a double bill.

sally wrote: ↑Mon Apr 11, 2022 6:25 pm je regrette to announce that there is a third one

no leisure to realize their miserable condition

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw4837526/?ref_=tt_urv
Oddly enough, there seem to be a lot of discrepancies over how Smith created this short. "Number 3: Interwoven" is the third "early abstractions" short made by Smith, five years later than the previous one, and like the other two, Wikipedia states the same info: this movie was hand-painted on 35mm film-stock and photographed on 16mm. However, other sources (like the DVD the other IMDb reviewers have seen) state that Smith used a batik process or Vaseline and tape to make it. I don't know why the methods differ so much, and this will have to remain a mystery for the time being--but I'd advise we take Smith's word for what he did, which means the batik process.

https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3840933/?ref_=tt_urv
I don't want to be harsh on the film, but it's really not much more than a series of colorful block patterns moving across the screen. Smith liked to bring folk traditions to abstract animation and one might compare this to a 1940's version of psychedelia. Come to think of it, watching it with a buzz on might heighten one's appreciation of the effort. As interesting as it is to watch, I couldn't help thinking the exercise was kind of pointless, but on the flip side, it's a lot more creative than something I would be able to put together, and for an investment of three minutes, it's not the worst thing you could do to watch the film.

https://www.ubu.com/film/harrington_fragment.html

Once upon a time, the U.S. of A. had our own Jean Cocteau in the making, but he was too early for the 1960s window that let his spiritual kin (Kenneth Anger) and progeny (Andy Warhol) in, and we consigned him to a downward trajectory of increasingly camp-value-laden features until he finally had to make his living directing scattered episodes of addictive-crap TV like Dynasty. But a little treasure trove of Curtis Harrington’s dreamlike, lush, sexually ambiguous, and death-obsessed short films remains, the newly restored versions of which have now been carefully compiled for this new Blu-ray release, and they are a revelation. In the five shorts that he made between 1946 and 1955, Harrington, using more imagination and inspiration than material resources, used the magical medium of cinema to inscribe his wordless visions of the ineffable exaltations and horrors of sex and death, longing, and perpetually mutable identity onto celluloid in a way more famously associated with Luis Bunuel or David Lynch; in some ways, in the chronological aesthetic lineage of cinema, he’s the long-missing link between the two. But it’s much better late than never to have the chance to get lost in Harrington’s transfixing, seductive miniature dreamscapes.

Made while Curtis Harrington was a student at the University of Southern California, where the film was also shot, "Fragment of Seeking" features a youthful Harrington in a revealing double role. "A climactic fragment from the existence of an adolescent Narcissus", wrote Harrington to describe his breakthrough film which so impressed maverick director Albert Lewin that he recommended Harrington for his first creative job in the studio system, as an assistant to the producer Jerry Wald.