'It was in San Francisco at a punk festival. I was already high and the air was so thick in the rooms that you could cut it with a knife. I had a photograph camera with me; I stood in a corner of the entrance hall and took 36 pictures on slide film. At home I put the slides into a slide projector. I took out the lens and filmed the slides by filming directly from the projector - using single frames according to a certain plan.'
Len Lye scraped together enough funding and borrowed equipment to produce a two-minute short featuring his self-made monkey, singing and dancing to 'Peanut Vendor', a 1931 jazz hit for Red Nichols. The two foot high monkey had bolted, moveable joints and some 50 interchangeable mouths to convey the singing. To get the movements right, Lye filmed his new wife, Jane, a prize-winning rumba dancer.
Although Gainsbourg and Birkin had appeared in a string of films since their magnetic collision in Pierre Grimblat’s Slogan, Melody was a bit of diversion from their collaborations since it’s a series of interwoven videos inspired by the Gainsbourgalbum. For '71 it’s a novel concept to bring visual life to an LP, but even more surprising are the short film’s amazing visuals that director Averty crafted using a wealth of video filters, overlays, camera movements and chroma key effects. Averty applies these in tandem with the increasing tone of Gainsbourg’s songs, which more or less chronicle an older man's affair with a young girl. Each song is comprised of steady, sometimes brooding poetic delivery, with refrains timed to the phrase repeats of each song, while Alan Parker’s buzzing guitar accompanies and wiggles around Gainsbourg’s resonant voice. The bass is fat and groovy, the drums easy but steady, and the periodic use of strings or rich vibrato makes this short a sultry little gem.
The Cat in the Hat is all set for a lovely picnic, but the evil Grinch changes his plans by inventing a contraption that captures noise and makes it sound ferocious. The Cat has to save the world from the clutches of the Grinch and the only way to do it is to reach Grinch's soft spot.
Dislocation in time, time signatures, time as a philosophical concept, and slavery to time are some of the themes touched upon in this 9-minute experimental film, which was written, directed, and produced by Jim Henson. Screened for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in May of 1965, "Time Piece" enjoyed an eighteen-month run at one Manhattan movie theater and was nominated for an Academy Award for Outstanding Short Subject.
A group of stable hands is given a race horse when its owner retires from the business. They raise money to run the horse in the Hollywood Derby at Santa Anita race track. Many Hollywood personalities attend the event.
A group of African-American waiters on a railway believe they have made a deal to secure a railroad dining car that they set up on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles as a diner. To bring in customers, they sing, their voices providing most of the musical accompaniment as well. At the diner, in front of a crowd of swells, the police deliver the bad news.
This animated short follows an unwanted baby who is passed from house to house. The film is the Canadian contribution to an hour-long feature film celebrating UNESCO's Year of the Child (1979). It illustrates one of the ten principles of the Declaration of Children's Rights: every child is entitled to a name and a nationality. The film took home an Oscar® for Best Animated Short Film.
A Pop Art extravaganza by Fred Mogubgub from the late-1960s, innovative in the use of the quick cut, this film is a parade of pop icons of its time. Features a pre-Playboy, pre-N. O. W. Gloria Steinem.
[…] A reel was shot of the Noh drama Momiji-gari (Maple Leaf Hunters, or Viewing Scarlet Maple Leaves), in which Danjuro played opposite Onoe Kikugoro V (1844-1903) as an ogress who has disguised herself as the Princess Sarashina. Filmed by Shibata Tsunekichi in the open air on a windy day in November 1899, Danjuro would allow only the one take, so that when his fan blew away in mid-performance the scene had to stay. The film re-emerged at the Kikikan theatre in 1907 where it was a great success and inspired a wave of fiction filmmaking based on traditional Japanese narratives. (cont. http://victorian-cinema.net/danjuro)
This short film documents Australian composer Richard Meale’s homage to the young French poet, Arthur Rimbaud. Meale composed a music piece for woodwind, percussion and strings which he titled “Incredible Floridas”.
A man in tight jeans buffs his car to the strains of The Paris Sisters' "Dream Lover".
Puce Moment is a short 6 minute film by Kenneth Anger, author of the Hollywood Babylon books, filmed in 1949. Puce Moment resulted from the unfinished short film Puce Women. The film opens with a camera watching 1920s style flapper gowns being taken off a dress rack. The dresses are removed and danced off the rack to music. (The original soundtrack was Verdi opera music; in the 1960s, Anger re-released the film with a new psychedelic folk-rock soundtrack performed by Jonathan Halper.) A long-lashed woman, Yvonne Marquis, dresses in the purple puce gown and walks to her vanity to apply perfume. She lies on a chaise lounge which then begins to move around the room and eventually out to a patio. Borzois appear and she prepares to take them for a walk.
A gang of Nazi bikers prepares for a race as sexual, sadistic, and occult images are cut together.
A clip-show music video for the album of the same name and vintage. Includes 5 songs from the album ("Mousetrap", "Disco Mickey Mouse", "Watch Out For Goofy", "Macho Duck", "Welcome To Rio").
This is an animated version of Yanase Takashi's picture book featuring the friendship between a mother dog, Muku-muku, who lost her puppy, and the baby lion Buru-buru, who lost her mother.
Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, Puss in Boots, and the rest of the Far Far Away Kingdom battle it out in a singing competition.
Cao Fei recorded her experiences within the online social platform Second Life. The result is a wistful, surreal vision of an alternative reality sprung from the pop culture fantasies and hyper-consumerism of contemporary urban China, while also trying to transcend its real-life limitations. It can be seen as an answer to the challenge posed by River Elegy: how to envision a new Chinese destiny founded on principles of individuality, creativity, discovery, and freedom. The film also reflects the contemporary condition of the virtual supplanting our experience of the real.
Lucy, a young Victorian woman in the Old West, is being tormented by nightly visits from an incubus. Her friend Madeleine tries to console her, but is unable to help. A fallen woman, Lucy gets a job singing at the local saloon. However, the Incubus has followed her there; and things take an unexpected turn as Lucy and the Incubus, amidst the rowdy cowboys and saucy can-can girls, have their final showdown.
Short film to a song of love lost and rediscovered, a woman sees and undergoes surreal transformations. Her lover's face melts off, she dons a dress from the shadow of a bell and becomes a dandelion, ants crawl out of a hand and become Frenchmen riding bicycles. Not to mention the turtles with faces on their backs that collide to form a ballerina, or the bizarre baseball game.