‘La course à l’abîme’ is a depiction of the final ride into hell from ‘La Damnation de Faust’ (1846) by Hector Berlioz.
Puppet animation of Bert Ambrose and His Orchestra performing. A Puppetoon animated short film.
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
An engine moves from the roundhouse to a track where it couples with several passenger cars. At 2:10 in the afternoon, it starts a trip out of the station through the countryside to its destination. The film consists of a montage of shots, some close up, of the engine and its gears and wheels. With the accompanying ambient sounds and an orchestral score, the emphasis is on the engine's power and speed. Parallel lines of multiple tracks, telephone wires, and trees confirm a careful composition.
The Gay Parisian is an American short film produced in 1941 by Warner Bros. featuring the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo and directed by Jean Negulesco. The film is a screen adaptation, in Technicolor, of the 1938 ballet Gaîté Parisienne, choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Jacques Offenbach. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 14th Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).
The first of a series of six two-reel "Musical Parade" shorts produced in Technicolor for the Paramount 1943-44 production season. The series would continue into 1948, and then were reissued in the early 50's. Songs included "All the Way" and "At the Mardi Gras."
Multi-faceted artist Phil Niblock captures a brief moment of an interstellar communication by the Arkestra in their prime. Black turns white in a so-called negative post-process, while Niblock's camera focuses on microscopic details of hands, bodies and instruments. A brilliant tribute to the Sun King by another brilliant supra-planetary sovereign. (Eye of Sound)
A woman who can't stand the passing of time turns herself into a black hole. A thousand unchanging years pass inside her warm and dark embrace until, finally, the Singularity awakens inside.
“Sonic artist” Chris Cree Brown discusses composing with new media and how he orchestrates particular sounds into formal compositional structures. Some sounds are made instrumentally, while others are recorded from his environment. In 1980 few classically-trained musicians in New Zealand experimented with synthesized sound and the gloriously large and sturdy equipment Brown uses to create his music will be of sure anthropological interest to many musos. The documentary was recorded with no script to capture the true art of creation.
Johnny YesNo – Redux reunites Cabaret Voltaire and Peter Care almost 30 years later with a completely new cast, a relocation to LA and an entirely new soundtrack remixed by Richard H. Kirk, the film has lost none of its hallucinatory power. The short goes deep into the structure of Peter Care’s original film and the Cabaret Voltaire tracks used in connection with it. What emerges is as much a juxtaposition of times and places as sights and sounds. The tale changes in the retelling, but that change now seems to be taking place on a molecular level. Richard H Kirk has reconfigured the film’s soundtrack, giving the proceedings an ominous sense of something slowly sliding into view from afar, glimpsed out of the corner of the eye.
The story of a dancer who finds mysterious objects in the practice room. The things that brought her gave birth to a new spirit and choreography. Things from a mysterious man who turns out to be a maestro from the past.
A hep teen hears a tune on the jukebox at the malt shop and calls his girl; She rounds up a crowd and soon the whole place is jumping.
A pop star deals with the personal ramifications of fame
Animator Ryan Larkin does a visual improvisation to music performed by a popular group presented as sidewalk entertainers. His take-off point is the music, but his own beat is more boisterous than that of the musicians. The illustrations range from convoluted abstractions to caricatures of familiar rituals. Without words.
Set in the future: Two men learn that a mysterious winged girl has been taken prisoner, and then decide that they must free her at any cost.
Joo Si auditions for the opportunity of a lifetime to be a principal backup dancer for the sexy female pop singing sensation, The 4Play Ladies.
This animated short is a play on motion set against a background of multi-hued sky. Spheres of translucent pearl float weightlessly in the unlimited panorama of the sky, grouping, regrouping or colliding like the stylized burst of some atomic chain reaction. The dance is set to the musical cadences of Bach, played by pianist Glenn Gould.
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.
DO
A retrospective of popular music from the 1890s and the turn of the century, with words for the audience to join in.