Jean-Pierre Bouyxou interviewed

Dailymotion has an interview by Stéphane du Mesnildot with Jean-Pierre Bouyxou –via I’m in a Jess Franco state of mind by Robert Monell.

“Une interview de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, mémoire vivante de l’underground et de la contre-culture. Il évoque la naissance de sa cinéphilie et l’importance de la revue Midi-Minuit Fantastique. Il nous parle aussi de Jean Boullet, de Kenneth Anger et de “l’adaptation” d’Histoire d’O par ce dernier.”

Summary:

Part 1: Il évoque la naissance de sa cinéphilie et l’importance de la revue Midi-Minuit Fantastique. Il nous parle aussi de Jean Boullet, de Kenneth Anger et de “l’adaptation” d’Histoire d’O par ce dernier.

Part 2: Jean-Pierre nous parle des années 60 et du caractère sulfureux du cinéma fantastique, mais aussi de Guy Debord.

Part 3: Jean-Pierre nous parle de cinéma expérimental, du cinéaste Etienne O’Leary et de la contestation dans les années 60.

Part 4: Jean-Pierre nous parle du peintre et photographe Pierre Molinier et de son film “Satan bouche un coin”. il évoque aussi Noël Godin et les attentats pâtissiers de Georges Le Gloupier.

Part 5: Jean-Pierre nous parle de son amitié avec Jean Rollin, le grand cinéaste de films de vampires français.

Part 7: Jean-Pierre nous parle de ses deux films pornos qu’il a réalisés dans les années 70 : “Entrez vite… vite je mouille” et “Amours collectives”.

Part 8: Jean-Pierre nous parle de la revue Fascination, la bible des amateurs d’érotisme « Belle Epoque ».

I’ve mentioned Bouyxou here.

John Zorn plays his favourite records

John Zorn plays his favourite records via dmtls

The thing I like to find out most about my favourite artists is who influenced them. Show me your bookcase/record case/video library and I’ll tell you who you are!

A bit about Zorn at Art and Popular Culture.

The originating broadcast is NYC FM, c. a. 1992.

The tracklisting is Mauricio Kagel, Napalm Death, James Blood Ulmer, Hasil Adkins, Juan Garcia Esquivel, Roland Kirk, Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, Husker Du, Die Kreuzen, Naked City, Indian Karnatic Jazz (directed by T.K. Ramamurthi), Funkadelic, Beach Boys, Ennio Morricone, John Zorn, Lenny Tristano, very similar to the one found here.

This is the hippest hour of music I’ve’ heard in a long time.

“These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!”

I Spit On Your Grave (1959) – Michel Gast

On the morning of this date in 1959, Boris Vian was at the Cinema Marbeuf in Paris for the screening of the film version (see picture above) of his controversial “Vernon Sullivan” novel, I Spit On Your Graves. He had already fought with the producers over their interpretation of his work and he publicly denounced the film stating that he wished to have his name removed from the credits. A few minutes after the film began, he reportedly blurted out: “These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!” He then collapsed into his seat and died of a heart attack en route to the hospital.

Background:

J’irai cracher sur vos tombes (Eng: I Spit On Your Graves) is a 1946 French language novel by Boris Vian written under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. It was adapted to film by Michel Gast in 1959. Radley Metzger bought the American the rights to this film and distributed it there from 1963 onwards. Miscegenation, murder and revenge are the themes of this French crime drama set in the American south.

Plot

The story, like the other stories that Vian wrote under the “Sullivan” moniker, is set in the American South and describes the difficulties African Americans face in their daily lives with “whites”. In this novel, Lee Anderson, a light-skinned African-American, leaves his native town after his brother was lynched and hanged because he was in love with a white woman. Once arrived in this other city, Lee becomes librarian and fraternizes with the local youngsters who crave for alcohol and sex. His goal is to avenge his brother.

Different in style from other Vian novels, this story is more violent, rawer and most representative of the “Sullivan” series, in which Vian denounces the atmosphere of racism and the precarious situation of African Americans’ living conditions in the American South.

Shortly after its publication (in 1949) the novel was banned because it was perceived as pornographic and immoral; Vian himself was convicted of “outrage aux bonnes mœurs” [2] a French phrase meaning outrage to public morality or “an insult to public decency. (see Censorship in France) There was a 1947 illustrated version by Jean Boullet. The novel also exists in a bowlderized version.

I’ve previously written about Vian here.

Carnivalesque damsels

Apparently, Michel Houellebecq is to be found behind the camera these days. He is busy with the film adaptation of Platform (or is it Possiblity of an Island?). Some stills can be found on the website of Fernando Arrabal. Scarcely clad body-painted carnivalesque damsels draw the immediate attention. It has been rumored that Rem Koolhaas would design the decors. Fernando Arrabal is prominently present. –via De Papieren Man

A phantasmal group of huntsmen

The wild hunt (1872) by Peter Nicolai Arbo

The Wild Hunt was a folk myth prevalent in former times across Northern, Western and Central Europe. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, horses, hounds, etc., in mad pursuit across the skies or along the ground, or just above it. It is often a way to explain thunderstorms.

The devil destroyed all young baobabs

Baobab is the common name of a tree, native to Madagascar, mainland Africa and Australia. The baobab is occasionally known as the devil tree, from African folklore which has it that the devil was mad at the tree because he got stuck in its branches, pulled it out and planted it upside down, making the branches the roots and vice versa. To make sure no future baobab trees would grow, the devil destroyed all young baobabs, that is why there are only fully grown baobabs. The Devil Tree is also the name of a novel by Jerzy Kosinski which I just finished reading and liked a lot. It’s the story of a ‘poor little rich kid’ who travels, goes in group therapy, is initiated into ‘the concern’ (its mysticism reminded me of Iain Banks‘ The Business). This revenge tale is the male equivalent of Fear of Flying (without the literary references). Both were published in 1973 and reflect the American zeitgeist. There is a fine review by Mary Ellin Barrett, Cosmopolitan.

Also, don’t miss Her Private Devil, the tale of the love affair between Kosinski and Laurie Steiber as told by Steiber over at nymag.

The power to unlock any door

Hand of Glory, image sourced here

The Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a man who has been hanged, often specified as being the left (Latin: sinister) hand, or else, if the man were hanged for murder, the hand that “did the deed.”

According to old European beliefs, a candle made of the fat from a malefactor who died on the gallows, virgin wax, and Lapland sesame oil (the candle could only be put out with milk), and the hand having come from the said hanged criminal, lighted and placed in the Hand of Glory (as in a candlestick) would have rendered motionless all persons to whom it was presented. The Hand of Glory also purportedly had the power to unlock any door it came across.

The legend is traceable to about 1440, but the name only dates from 1707. It was originally a name for the mandrake root (via French “mandragore” and thus “hand of glory”) that became conflated with the earlier legend. The confusion may have occurred because mandrakes are said to grow beneath the bodies of hanged criminals.

Liquid Sky and Eugène Atget

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9-n9gpFVpk]

Liquid Sky trailer via Dennis Cooper‘s today’s Video Nasties special .

Liquid Sky is a 1982 science fiction film produced and directed by Slava Tsukerman that has become a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit and to electroclash afficionados. The film would make an ideal double bill with Café Flesh.

Also, GmtPlus9 (-15) has a post on perennial favorite French photographer Eugène Atget, whose work can be compared to E. O. Hoppé‘s cityscapes of London.

Rue de la Colonie (1900) – Eugène Atget
Image sourced here.