{abstract cinema} – Page 7

Moon 69, a film by Scott Bartlett

Scott Bartlett was the director of OffOn (1967), one of the key works of psychedelic cinema, and an earlier example of experimental film making use of video effects. Similar effects may be seen in Bartlett’s follow-up, Moon 69, which subjects footage from the NASA archives to a variety of processing techniques, especially solarisation. The copy linked here is the only available one at the moment, and is hosted by a channel where several similar films have amended soundtracks. Consequently, the soundtrack on this one may not be the original.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive

Us Down By The Riverside, a film by Jud Yalkut

More psychedelic freakery from American filmmaker Jud Yalkut. Us Down By The Riverside (1966) is short and sweet: three minutes of acid visuals accompanied by a muddy recording of The Beatles playing Tomorrow Never Knows. Groovy. For a very different take on John Lennon’s psych-out, see the penultimate episode of cartoon show, The Beatles.

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• The abstract cinema archive

Turn, Turn, Turn, a film by Jud Yalkut

I’m currently reading my way through Rob Chapman’s lysergic doorstop Psychedelia and Other Colours, a comprehensive study of a cultural phenomenon that’s well-represented on these pages. So expect more posts like this one which concerns another gem of abstract/psychedelic cinema. Turn, Turn, Turn (1966) is a collaboration between Jud Yalkut (visuals) and the Us Company aka USCO (sound). The latter receive several mentions in Chapman’s detailing of the early psych scene in San Francisco in the mid-60s; here they put a Byrds song through the mangler while Yalkut’s mechanical and other effects flicker and gyrate. The visuals are reminiscent in places of the film made by László Moholy-Nagy of his Light-Space Modulator, fittingly so when Chapman credits Moholy-Nagy’s machine with being one of the many forerunners of psychedelia in the art movements of the early 20th century.

The YouTube copy linked here has a bonus at the end with a truncated version of a later Yalkut collaboration with Nam June Paik, Beatles Electronique.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The abstract cinema archive

Herbert Loebel’s crystals

Given the year it was made, Crystals (1968) has unavoidable, if inadvertent, psychedelic connotations, especially when you see these iridescent forms blooming against vivid backdrops. The same can’t be said for the music that accompanies Herbert Loebel’s photography, however, so once again I’d recommend watching this with a soundtrack of your own choosing.

Lichtspiel Schwarz-Weiss-Grau, a film by László Moholy-Nagy

A beguiling short from 1930 made by the Hungarian artist to demonstrate the patterns of light and shade created by his Light-Space Modulator (aka Light Prop for an Electric Stage, 1922–1930), an early kinetic sculpture. The film could have worked well enough as a series of documentary shots but Moholy-Nagy compounds the effects with superimposition, lens fragmentation and even a brief negative sequence. Watch it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ballet Mécanique