October 31st 2007
Stan Brackhage Blue Moses
"A meat enigma spoken in eternal language of director, con man, and magician. It's about the sham flesh that men create to dam the streaming of truth from their muscles and senses ... a molecule of revelation in the shape of a drama thrown off by the artist between ANTICIPATION and DOG STAR MAN." - Michael McClure
Maya Deren Ritual In Transfigured Time (1946)
In Maya Deren's Ritual in Transfigured Time we have gestures that invite us to move into step with them, abandoning the comfort of the known and giving ourselves over to so many strange partners. This silent short begins in a domestic environment, moves to a party scene, and ends with modern dance performed in an outdoor setting. The film's continuity is established by an emphasis on gesture and/or dance throughout.
Ron Rice Chumlum (1964)
With Jack Smith, Beverly Grant, Mario Montez, Joel Markman, Frances Francine, Guy Henson, Barry Titus, Zelda Nelson, Gerard Malanga. Music by Angus McLise. Sound Technician: Tony Conrad. "It's not unlike a bizarre dream, in riotous color.." New York Herald Tribune. Barbara Rubin's 29-minute Christmas on Earth is the filmic record of an orgy staged in a New York City apartment in 1963. This double projection of overlapping images of nude men and women clowning around and making love is one of the first sexually explicit works produced by the American postwar avant-garde. Today Christmas on Earth generates a small but passionate discourse in avant-garde film circles.
Kenneth Anger Invocation of My Demon Brother
The Shadowing forth of Lord Lucifer, as the Powers gather at a midnight mass. "A film that no number of viewings will ever exhaust, a film that will always remain a source of mysterious energy as only great works of art do." - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice "Anger's purest visual achievement ... a conjuration of pagan forces that comes off the screen in a surge of spiritual and mystical power. It has weirdly compelling imagery, with a soundtrack by Mick Jagger on a Moog Synthesizer that has the insistent hallucinatory power of voodoo." - Richard Whitehall, LA Free Press Awards: Tenth Independent Film Award (for the year 1969) by Film Culture. This Award was presented "for his film INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER specifically, and for his entire creative work in general; for his unique fusion of magick, symbolism, myth, mystery, and vision with the most modern sensibilities, techniques, and rhythms of being; for revealing it all in a refreshed light, persistently, constantly, and with a growing complexity of means and content; at the same time, for doing it with an amazing clarity, directness and sureness."
Storm de Hirsch Peyote Queen
A further exploration into the color of ritual, the color of thought; a journey through the underworld of sensory derangement. "A very beautiful work! The abstractions drawn directly on film are like the paintings of Miró moving at full speed to the rhythm of an African beat." - D. Noguez, La Nouvelle Revue Française "Among my favorites ... beauty and excitement." - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice
