Free Radicals/Len Lye

WIKI: Len Lye, born Leonard Charles Huia Lye (5 July 1901, Christchurch, New Zealand - 15 May 1980, Warwick, New York), was a New Zealand-born artist known primarily for his experimental films and kinetic sculpture.
In Free Radicals he used black film stock and scratched designs into the emulsion. The result was a dancing pattern of flashing lines and marks, as dramatic as lightning in the night sky.

Portrait of Jason/Shirley Clarke

ABOUT: "As a performer in his own Portrait, Jason Holiday is prodigious, altogether tireless. Despite his ironic refrain of "I'll never tell," the only evident limits on what he's willing to recount are fixed on how much anyone wants to listen. There's his years of playing Houseboy to wealthy, dysfunctional white couples on Nob Hill in San Francisco, for instance. Or his other, more durable vocation as a male trollop, a "stone whore," in his words, "balling my way from Maine to Mexico, and I ain't gotta dollar to show for it," There's his turbulent childhood as Aaron Payne, an almost militant sissy living in the same house with a father who was anything but. And, of course, there's that nightclub act. All of it is baseline raw material for the film, and he knows it."

The Idea of North/Rebecca Baron

In the guise of chronicling the final moments of three polar explorers marooned on an ice floe a century ago, Baron's film investigates the limitations of images and other forms of record as a means of knowing the past and the paradoxical interplay of film time, historical time, real time and the fixed moment of the photograph.--New York Film Festival, 1997, "Views from the Avant-Garde" program notes

http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$misc?clips/IDEAOFNORT.mov

Onan/Takahiko Iimura

ABOUT: "Iimura is one of the pioneers of Japanese cinema and video art. He directed his first experimental films in New York during the 1960s. His work explores a variey of subjects from ecology, erotic imagery, and social critique. In the 1970s he began working with video. In the 1990s he discovered the domain of multimedia and created interactive art where the visitor can become an integral part of the installation."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3osBbn5bo4Q

Ballet Mécanique/Fernand Léger

WIKI: "Ballet Mécanique (1924) was a project by the American composer George Antheil and the filmmaker/artist Fernand Léger. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is Antheil's best known and most enduring work. It remains famous for its radical style and instrumentation as well as its storied history."

Looking for Jimmy/Julie Delpy

Synopsis: "Julie Delpy describes her directing debut, LOOKING FOR JIMMY, as "more of an experiment than an actual film." Shot on digital video, at a cost of about $3000, it was shot over a 24-hour period in Los Angeles, stopping the camera only to change the tape. It's a freewheeling excursion through contemporary Los Angeles."

Plus d'infos sur ce film

La jetée/Chris Marker

WIKI: "La jetée (English: The Jetty or The Pier) (1962) is a 28-minute black and white science fiction film by Chris Marker. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel."

365 Day Project/Jonas Mekas

WIKI: "Jonas Mekas born December 24, 1922 in the village of Semeniškiai, near Biržai) is a Lithuanian filmmaker, writer, and curator who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema. His work has been exhibited in museums and festivals across Europe and America.
Beginning in the fall of 2006, Mekas planned to film 365 short videos for Apple Computer's Video iPod, releasing one a day on his website."

Anemic Cinema/Marcel Duchamp

WIKI/ "Anemic Cinema or Anémic Cinéma (1926) is a Dadaist, surrealist, or experimental film made by Marcel Duchamp. The film depicts whirling animated drawings -- which Duchamp called Rotoreliefs -- alternated with puns in French. Duchamp signed the film with his alter ego name of Rrose Sélavy."

Inferno/Dario Argento

WIKI: "Inferno is a 1980 Italian supernatural horror film written and directed by Dario Argento. The convoluted story concerns a young man's investigation into the disappearance of his sister, who had been living in a New York City apartment building that also served as a home for a powerful, centuries-old witch."