René Laloux – Page 4 – { feuilleton }

The Captive, a film by René Laloux

The feature films of French animator René Laloux are the closest thing to cinematic equivalents of comics magazine Métal Hurlant. Laloux’s collaboration with Roland Topor, Fantastic Planet (1973), is familiar to Anglophone audiences but fewer people are aware of Time Masters (1982) and Gandahar (1988), two more science fiction films made with Moebius and Philippe Caza respectively. Time Masters looks marvellous but the story (based on a novel by Stefan Wul) lacks the strangeness of Fantastic Planet. Gandahar, based on a novel by Jean-Pierre Andrevon, I’ve yet to see but anyone searching for it should be aware that the version dubbed into English (and retitled The Light Years) dumped Gabriel Yared’s score, and had a sexual encounter censored by the usual rabble of prudish American producers.

The Captive (1988) continues the collaboration with Philippe Caza being a 7-minute adaptation of Caza’s comic story Equinoxe (1982). The music for this one is also by Gabriel Yared, and this copy at YouTube includes English subtitles. For comparison, the comic story is here. Of the two I prefer the comic but then I’ve always enjoyed Caza’s work.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Les Temps Morts by René Laloux

Chronopolis by Piotr Kamler

Another gem at Ubuweb, and nothing to do with JG Ballard’s SF story of the same name, Piotr Kamler’s Chronopolis (1983) is a 50-minute animated science fiction film, albeit science fiction of a much more abstract variety than one usually finds in cinema. I’m generally exasperated by the way film and TV SF does little more than play Cowboys & Indians in space so it’s refreshing to see something that’s unashamedly strange and doesn’t feel the need to explain itself. There is apparently a version of this with some English narration for those benighted American audiences everyone feels a need to pander to but the Ubuweb version is wordless, and if you can’t read French then you won’t understand the few lines of text prologue at the opening.

Accompanying Kamler’s beautifully crafted and quite inexplicable scenes there’s an electronic score by composer Luc Ferrari, mostly analogue timbres whose origin is as mysterious as the events taking place on-screen. Kamler’s statuesque figures remind me of the gods and aliens that Moebius and co. were drawing in Métal Hurlant during the 1970s. Chronopolis was a French production begun in 1977 so it’s possible that French comics were an influence. Moebius himself worked on another animated SF film during this period, René Laloux’s Time Masters (1982). Chronopolis is closer in tone to the weirdness of Laloux’s earlier Fantastic Planet (1973), and all the better for it.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Les Jeux des Anges by Walerian Borowczyk
• Les Temps Morts by René Laloux

The Telephone Box

Ah, The Telephone Box, or La Cabina, to give Antonio Mercero’s half-hour film its original Spanish title. Made in 1972, I saw what was probably the first UK TV screening sometime around 1980, and for years afterwards was asking people whether they ever saw that film about the guy stuck in a phone box. Eventually I got in on tape following another TV screening and would foist it on anyone who hadn’t seen it. Thom at Form is Void linked to a YouTube copy a while back, and Stephen Gallagher reminded me of it a few hours ago, so here it is, one of those simple but memorable dramas in which a small problem escalates into a nightmare.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Les Temps Morts by René Laloux

Les Temps Morts by René Laloux

Is Les Temps Morts a French figure of speech? The phrase translates as “idle periods” as well as the more literal “dead times”, so the title of this short film from 1964 may have some punning intent. This was René Laloux’s second film as director, and one I’d not seen before until it turned up on YouTube. It’s an oddly morbid piece not far removed in tone from yesterday’s The Apotheosis of War but a dose of Surrealism courtesy of Roland Topor’s minatory imagination rescues it from Vereshchagin’s moralising.

Between some documentary clips of children play-fighting, war scenes, bullfights and bird shoots, Topor’s scratchy ink drawings are brought to life with minimal animation. There’s also some narration in unsubtitled French. Laloux, Topor and soundtrack composer Alain Goraguer followed this with another, lighter short, The Snails (also on YouTube), in 1966, and joined forces again for Laloux’s first animated feature in 1973, the justly-celebrated Fantastic Planet, a science fiction film that’s a lot weirder than the usual Hollywood conceptions of the genre. That’s been on DVD for a while, and is essential viewing for Topor aficionados.

• The schizophrenic cinema of René Laloux by Craig Keller.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Taxandria, or Raoul Servais meets Paul Delvaux

Weekend links 50

Invisible Light by Margo Selski.

The Glass Garage Fine Art Gallery has an online collection of paintings by Margo Selski, many of which feature her cross-dressing son, Theo. Coilhouse profiled artist and model earlier in the week. Some of these paintings mix oil with beeswax which is something I’ve not come across before.

• The Periwinkle Journal‘s first issue will be available online, free, from March 22nd until mid-June, featuring work by filmmaker and artist Hans Scheirl (Dandy Dust), artwork and collages by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, a 7-page colour comic by Mavado Charon, artwork by Timothy Cummings, artwork and installations by Cody Chritcheloe/SSION, photos by Megan Mantia, Science-Heroes by Peter Max Lawrence, an illustration portfolio by Diego Gómez, selections from the queer photography pool on Flickr, reviews and other stuff. More later.

• The Quietus wanted to remind us that this year is the 25th anniversary of the NME‘s C86 compilation tape, a collection that sought to capture a moment of ferment but which inadvertently inspired too much dreary sub-Velvet Underground pop. I’d rather celebrate the 30th anniversary of the NME‘s C81 compilation, a far more diverse collection and musically superior. If you want to judge for yourself, both tapes can be downloaded here.

Machine in the Garden — Our Island Shall Know Abundance Without End by Margo Selski.

• Rick Poynor continues his exploration of Ballardian graphics with a piece about the paintings of Peter Klasen. Related: Where Will It End? JG Ballard interviewed by V. Vale & introduced by Michael Moorcock (Arthur No. 15/March 2005).

In his autobiography, Miracles of Life, JG Ballard suggested that illustrated versions of The Arabian Nights helped prepare him for surrealism.

Robert Irwin, author of The Arabian Nightmare, on the illustrators of The Arabian Nights.

• Another Coulthart cult movie surfaces, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End (1970), out of circulation for many years but newly restored by the BFI. A re-release is scheduled for May so I’m hoping now that a DVD release will follow soon after.

• Thom Ayres’ photostream at Flickr, and more long-exposure photos.

• Fuck You, A Magazine of the Arts, number 5, volume 8.

• Nicolas Roeg: “I don’t want to be ahead of my time.”

• MetaFilter looks at the films of René Laloux.

• The Eerie covers of Frank Frazetta.

• Indie Squid Kid.

• Requiem (for String Orchestra) by Toru Takemitsu.