Guilty pleasures #3

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO96CaLFRBw]

Cargo de Nuit (1983) Axel Bauer

The clip is directed by French photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino (1983). It is an homage to the movie Querelle by Fassbinder. To us, in the early eighties, Querelle was the quintessence of the macho/gay sensibility and it was copied by musicians such as Luc Van Acker on the cover of The Ship[1] album. Jean-Paul Gaultier appropriated this seaman’s aesthetic and celebrated it all through the early eighties.

Querelle (1982) – Rainer Werner Fassbinder
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Fassbinder’s adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel features surreal sets that underscore the dreamlike quality and abstraction of the novel. It was Fassbinder’s final and, by his own words, most important movie.

Digression #1: Axel Bauer is not related to John Bauer:

John Bauer

John Bauer

 

Merdre!

Ubu et la grande gidouille (1987) – Jan Lenica

Ubu et la grande gidouille is a 1987 French language feature animation film by Jan Lenica based on the work of Alfred Jarry.

From the excellent collection of experimental films by Youtube user TheMotionBrigades, from which { feuilleton }, culled to report on Karel Zeman. Also check, from the same collection, new work by Walerian Borowczyk  such as Encyclopedia de Grand Maman.

World dance music classics #10

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_2qjzj73Y]

“Theme from S’Express” (1989) – S’Express

This is from the period when house reached the public consciousness in Europe. It was released one year after Coldcut’s Doctorin’ The House. Both tracks featured nervous “acid” bass lines. A similar track from that same era is Stakker by Humanoid.

See previous entries in this series.

Woman makes love to cloud, divine jealousy

Io by Correggio

Jupiter and Io (c. 1530) – Correggio

It would appear that the dynamics of the two married protagonists of Greek and Roman mythology Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno) is one of a jealous wife chasing a promiscuous husband.

In order to conceal his escapades, Zeus constantly makes use of his shapeshifting abilities. Thus, he transforms himself into a cloud (he hid himself within a cloud with Io), a golden shower with Danae, a swan with Leda, a bull with Europa, depending on whether he needed to be charming and beautiful or powerful and frightening in his conquest.

See also: divine jealousy

 

Ways of Hearing

Yesterday evening, I attended David Toop’s presentation of his forthcoming book Ways of Hearing. Toop’s music theory is very much about hearing. I will write more about the presentation in a future post. But for now: a documentary film on Christian Marclay, which illustrates Toop’s stance on music well.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yqM3dAqTzs]

Christian Marclay mini documentary

If you known where this documentary originated, please let me know.

Why women love apes

Waarom vrouwen van apen houden

Why women love apes by Stine Jensen

Dedicated to my friend M______. A belated happy birthday.

Twentieth-century western culture is full of examples of erotic relationships between dark-haired apes and blond women: there is a striking connection between woman and ape not only in movies and novels, but also in scientific practice of primatology. In this fascinating study, literary theorist Stine Jensen shows how the roles of ape, woman and man, too, have changed fundamentally throughout the last century.

For example, the famous film classic King Kong from 1933, was born of the nineteenth-century obsession with the rape-ape, but at the same time it presented the ape as an ambiguous creature – both malicious and gentle. Thereafter, mostly female researchers, such as Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas, ensured that the image of the primate changed from killer king to gentle giant. In their endeavours to make primates seem milder these women pushed such issues as the killing of younger troop members and other violence within ape society into the background.

See previous posts here and here.

 

WYWWYWI

Diario di un vizio (Diary of a Maniac)

Diario di un vizio (1993)

Fiction is consumed by the hours or days. People cocoon entire weekends to watch six seasons of Sex and the City. With an average length of 22 minutes per episode and a total of 94 episodes this comes to about 34 hours for the whole series. Talk about killing time.

I ask of the current media outlets to publish box sets of anthologies or series I want to watch. On demand. WYWWYWI, which is analogous to WYSIWYG, and stands for “What You Want, When You Want It.”

In my current mood, I’d like to order the box set of the complete oeuvre of Marco Ferreri. I’ve only seen two of his films: La Grande Bouffe and Tales of Ordinary Madness. I sadly missed a retrospective [1] of his work last December in London. Marco Ferreri has made about 27 films, with an average running time of 90 minutes each this gives a total viewing time of 40 hours. Slightly higher than the total time of Sex and the City. But a lot more satisfying.

About the photograph at the top of this post. It’s a screen cap from the 1993 Ferreri film Diario di un vizio starring Sabrina Ferilli. The nude female/dressed male motif is explored in it.