November 2021 – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 596

Jam III (2021) by Kotaro Hoshiyama.

• “Powell and Pressburger are peerless in realizing what Orson Welles would term plotless scenes—extra bits that ostensibly do not advance the story, but are a story unto themselves, and aggregate such that they’re vital to how we understand the characters who are living the story.” Colin Fleming says thanks for the Archers.

• A short promo for The Incal: The Movie. Hmm, okay. A film that adapted all 300 pages of the original story without changing anything or trying to explain away the weirdness would be worth seeing. But I doubt that’s what this will be. Read the book.

• “If a single word distills the New Wave aesthetic, it’s plastic…ironically flaunted artificiality became a leitmotif of the era.” Simon Reynolds reviews Reversing Into the Future: New Wave Graphics 1977–1990 by Andrew Krivine.

• Mixes of the week: a mix by Princess Diana Of Wales (not that one) for The Wire, and At The Outer Marker Part I, a Grateful Dead Twilight Zone mix by David Colohan.

• The Bloomingdale Story: read the never-before published Patricia Highsmith draft that would become Carol (aka The Price of Salt).

• At Spoon & Tamago: Multiple panels form collaged portraits painted by Kotaro Hoshiyama.

• New music: Pyroclasts F (excerpt) by Sunn O))), and Loop return with Halo.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: William E. Jones Day.

• Plastic Bamboo (1978) by Ryuichi Sakamoto | Barock-Plastik (2000) by Stereolab | Black Plastic (2002) by Ladytron

11 Preliminary Orbits Around Planet Lem by the Brothers Quay

Here come the Quays again with another short documentary for the Polish Cultural Institute. This was posted only a few days ago to acknowledge the centenary of the birth of writer Stanislaw Lem. It’s only the briefest run through Lem’s career as a writer of science fiction but it does include a sequence that lists the films adapted from his work which is a useful reminder of all the ones I’ve yet to see. And the piece ends with an extract from Maska, the Quays’ own adaptation of a Lem short story, and a favourite of mine among their recent films. (Thanks to Tomas for the tip!)

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Quay Brothers archive

VadeMecum by the Brothers Quay

After mentioning the Brothers Quay last week it occurred to me that I hadn’t searched around for a while to see what they might have been up to recently. They continue to be productive, and only a couple of months ago released a new 12-minute short, VadeMecum, which was produced for the Polish Book Institute. This is the Quays in their documentary mode, presenting the troubled life of Polish poet and artist Cyprian Kamil Norwid, together with extracts from his poetry and examples of his drawings. Norwid’s existence was news to me so the piece successfully achieved its goal of informing the unenlightened. Last month the brothers talked to Mikolaj Glinski at Culture.pl about their fascination with Polish art and literature.

Meanwhile, the Quays are no doubt continuing to work on their third feature film, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, in which they return to the writings of Bruno Schulz. Schulz’s story collection was adapted by Wojciech Has in 1973 as The Hourglass Sanatorium, a film I recommend most highly. The quality of the Quays version may be judged by this six-minute preview which immediately sets itself apart from the Has film with its puppets modelled on Schulz’s illustrations. I’ll be waiting impatiently for this one.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The Quay Brothers archive

Weekend links 595

Dig the eldritch letterforms, man. Dean Stockwell as Wilbur Whateley making the High Sign on the cover of Les Baxter’s soundtrack album, 1970. That gesture, incidentally, goes back a long way.

• If you have an abundance of interstellar credits burning a hole in your stillsuit then you may be interested in bidding for the original of the book commonly known as The Dune Bible, the complete set of storyboards by Jean “Moebius” Giraud, together with designs by other artists for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s abandoned feature film. I keep hoping someone might turn this into an animated feature, something like René Laloux’s Time Masters but on a grander scale and with better animation (hello, Japan). 46 pages of scans from a limited printing of the book may be seen here.

• RIP Dean Stockwell. His 1995 interview in Psychotronic Video magazine is much better value than any potted biography.

• Bed-hopping, martinis and self-loathing: Emma Brockes on Patricia Highsmith’s unpublished diaries.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Tracing the footsteps of travelling Ukiyoe artist Kawase Hasui.

• Culture.pl examines the theoretical revolution of Nicolaus Copernicus.

• Killian Fox on the cover designs for Penguin’s Modern Classics.

• Nick Mamatas on his favourite genre-breaking mysteries.

• New music: HYbr:ID oval p-dance by Alva Noto.

• Mix of the week: Isolatedmix 114 by R.A.D.E.

• Justin Robertson’s favourite music.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Clock.

• Jay Babcock at Substack.

• The Clock (1968) by Ruth White | Clock Factory (1993) by The Sabres Of Paradise | Internal Clock (2009) by Monolake

Abstract Cinema

Good to see this documentary turn up at last even if it is on a private YouTube channel affiliated to a site that hosts cinematic rarities. Abstract Cinema was made in 1993 for Channel 4 (UK) at the tail end of the period when the channel could be relied upon to screen resolutely uncommercial fare. The documentary was another production by Keith Griffiths, producer of many films with the Brothers Quay, and producer/director of a number of documentaries such as this, exploring the cinematic zones that television seldom acknowledges.

I’ve mentioned this programme a few times before because I taped it at the time, and still regard it as an excellent introduction to an idiom that many enthusiasts consider to be the purest form of cinema, as opposed to the theatrical storytelling that dominates the medium. Peter Greenaway has complained for years about the formulaic nature of contemporary feature films yet his own films, which are supposed to be an alternative to what he calls “dominant cinema”, aren’t so very different from the Hollywood norm in their reliance on actors, narratives, sets and the like. Abstract cinema avoids all of these things. Stan Brakhage is one of the filmmakers interviewed, and his own productions not only shunned sound, they even shunned the camera when he was painting directly onto the film strip. At the time of Griffiths’ interview Brakhage was doing this again using the comparatively larger canvas of Imax stock.

Griffiths’ documentary runs through the history of cinematic abstraction, from Oskar Fischinger and Len Lye (both the subjects of earlier Griffiths studies) to the 1990s when several of the interviewees had taken to programming computers to create their visuals. Griffiths made his documentary at just the right time. As well as having access to a TV channel that would present such work to an audience (albeit late at night), he was also able to interview a number of the leading practitioners while they were still around; in addition to Brakhage there’s John Whitney, Jules Engel, Pat O’Neill, Malcolm le Grice, Michael Scroggins and Vibeke Sorensen. Notably absent is Jordan Belson, possibly because he’s always been reluctant to discuss the production process that created his ethereal imagery, although film historian William Moritz discusses Belson’s work while guiding us through the history. What you don’t get here is the additional 25 minutes of abstract films that were broadcast after the documentary, an unprecedented event, and one that wouldn’t be repeated.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive