“The Big Swallow” (1901) by James Williamson
“The Big Swallow“ (1901) aka A Photographic Contortion, produced and directed by James Williamson.
The sales catalog of this film describes the film as “A man reading finds a photographer with his head under a cloth, about to take his picture. He orders him off, approaching nearer and nearer until his head fills the picture, and finally his mouth only occupies the screen. He opens it, and first the camera, then the operator disappear inside. He retires munching him up and expressing great satisfaction.”
A terrific piece of early meta-cinema breaking the fourth wall.
This post is inspired by a recent article by Keith Sanborn “Second hand, second person, at a second remove, forms of address in Youtube in historical perspective,” published in Brouillon 4. Keith Sanborn is an American filmmaker, media artist and connoisseur of the cinema of Guy Debord. With Peggy Ahwesh, he made The Dead Man.
Sleeve of the seven inch of Max Berlin’s “Elle et moi“ (1978)
“Elle et moi” is a musical composition by Max Berlin, first published in 1978 on the Belgian recording label USA Import.
This is the type of track which has survived in popular consciousness through nightclub play rather than radio play. I can’t remember hearing “Elle et Moi” on any commercial radio station.
Skilled and knowledgeable DJs usually play “Elle et moi” after or before Gainsbourg’s 1968 Requiem pour un con (YouTube), from the soundtrack to the film Le Pacha.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcNG4_Z2h5k]
From “The Incredibly Strange Film Show” (1988-89) Ross, Clarke
Apparently, so I found today, the book RE/Search No. 10: Incredibly Strange Films spawned a television documentary series hosted by Jonathan Ross. see the Doris Wishman entry on a YouTube clip here. Hurry, before it’s gone. Someone is going to object soon, be it copyright- or censorship wise.
Other parts of the series are online too.
I started reading Verschijningen today, a Dutch translation of a selection of texts by Henri Michaux, published by Meulenhoff in 1972.
My first conscious exposure to the thought of Michaux was by way of David Toop‘s Ocean of Sound, in which Toop describes Michaux as an armchair traveler.
The collection comprises Les poètes voyagent (1946); Un certain Plume (1930); Apparitions (1946); Ici Poddema (1946); texts from Façons d’endormi, facons d’eveille; followed by a short essay by the translator Laurens Vancrevel.
My first impressions are based on reading Les poètes voyagent; Un certain Plume and Apparitions, Plume providing the most satisfying reading experience: the whole of Plume breathes Edgar Allan Poe and especially Poe’s incomparable short story Loss of Breath.
Keywords of Michaux’s writing are viscerality; the tropes of the macabre, fantastique, rocambolesque and grotesque; petrifaction, death, the void, lightness and emptiness, “everything-you-know-is-wrong” feelings, disintegration, decapitation and dismemberment, walls (and especially ceilings). All things considered, this is a very eerie collection told in a matter of fact voice.
If the content and tone are definitely Poe, the form of this collection’s most likely sibling is the writing of Baudelaire, and especially Baudelaire’s prose poetry.
The “liner notes” to this collection also alerted me to Images du monde visionnaire, a film by Eric Duvivier and Henri Michaux, an educational film which was produced in 1963 by the film department of Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz (best known for synthesizing LSD in 1938) in order to demonstrate the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline and hashish. It is the only venture in film of notable French writer and painter Henri Michaux. See that film by following the Documents entry, read more at Ombres Blanches.
Some recent Flickr entries
Youtube: 100% Pure Poison’s “Windy C”, St. Germain’s “Sure Thing” and, “Get Involved by Pete Rock
If a musical composition’s popularity and quality can be measured from the number of times it’s been sampled, “Windy C” has fine credentials.
Windy C is a musical composition from the 1974 “Coming Right at You” album by 100% Pure Poison. “Windy C” was sampled for Pete Rock‘s “Get Involved” and St. Germain‘s Sure Thing.
Continuing the musical connections:
Sure Thing is a musical composition by Ludovic Navarre published on Tourist, featuring samples from “Windy C” and the soundtrack of Dennis Hopper‘s film The Hot Spot (John Lee Hooker, Miles Davis and Taj Mahal).
Let me give that video (not sure if original or some Youtube bricolage, stylish nevertheless):
[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=FgUFZQ4-HcY&]
Since its inception in the early nineties of last century, Wired Magazine has run a series called Tired/Wired. It highlights what is hot and what is not in cyber culture.
Here is my first Tired/Wired entry backed (or fronted) by a song by my musical hero Gainsbourg:
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sieGXAP2dCg]
“Qui est In Qui est Out” (1966) by Gainsbourg
(The above composition also counts as World Music Classic #28 )
Tired/Wired
Study of a Seated Nude Woman Wearing Mask (c. 1865–66) by Thomas Eakins
This drawing by American artist Eakins is a testament to the aphrodisian qualities of sensory deprivation. Central to this drawing are the breasts, ripe and heavy, surreal and unreal, proof that the most beautiful of women are not to be found in real life (except in brief photographic glimpses); but rather on paper.
Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbGUr97tIDs&]
Early animation by the Chiodo brothers (of Killer Klowns from Outer Space)
“I urge you, learn to see ‘bad’ films; they are sometimes sublime”. —Ado Kyrou, Le Surréalisme au cinéma, p. 276
Bad films are not only sublime, they learn you about the techniques of filmmaking, all the things we take for granted, the inner workings of concepts such as credibility in acting, continuity editing are exposed in watching and studying bad films.
I found the clip above while researching Elihu Vedder‘s painting The Roc’s Egg (1868) which is said to have furnished Ray Harryhausen with inspiration for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.
The only version of the Roc’s Egg painting I found was this one, by Robert Swain Gifford
I couldn’t find Vedder’s painting.
Update: I found the Edder version, clearly inferior to Gifford’s. I’ll give you both so you be the judge.
Vedder’s version of the Roc’s egg
