Unseen Cinema

[zedz]

This magnificent set keeps cropping up in other discussions, so I thought it was about time it had a thread of its own.

As is the case with some other posters, I don't think the organisers actually prove their thesis about 'avant-garde' cinema. It all depends on semantics: maybe the traditional definition of the 'avant-garde' is too narrow, but Posner doesn't effectively counter that by making his definition so hopelessly broad.

But who cares when the result is a collection of such richness?

Billy Bitzer's hypnotic proto-structuralist subway film is one of my absolute favourites (originally encountered on the American Film Archives set, of course), and I can't help returning to Cornell's Children's Party, with that amazing footage of the poor kid who's almost exactly as hungry as he is sleepy. And, of course, Gus "centre-parting from Hell" Visser and his unfortunate duck have been inflicted on just about every unfortunate caller since I received the set. Though, to be fair, the incredulity factor is almost as high for that "Chinese" guy murdering "Yes Sir, That's My Baby". Now, if you were trying to demonstrate the brilliance of your revolutionary new sound-recording system, why would you select performers whose English was all but indecipherable?

The mini-festival of Slavko Vorkapich is almost worth the hefty purchase price alone. That's one section where you can see exactly where Posner is coming from.

I'd be really interested to hear Herr Schreck explain his intense affection for Black Dawn. I found it hugely impressive, particularly in its bold use of landscape, but I don't think my love runs as deep (yet).

[scotty]

The Case sound tests are indeed a hoot. I also liked Steiner's H2O, In Youth, Beside a Lonely Sea with its split-screen experiments, Oil: A Symphony in Motion with its clanky rhetoric matched with evocative oil derrick visuals, and the immortal Spook Sport, which must have given the Fantasia cartoonists pause.

[HerrSchreck]

I'd be really interested to hear Herr Schreck explain his intense affection for Black Dawn. I found it hugely impressive, particularly in its bold use of landscape, but I don't think my love runs as deep (yet).

I'm finally breaking the surface after a deluge of exploitation & horror films, along with this set and the Lloyd set-- as well as coming to the end of having acquired most of the CC's I want to own-- meaning that I don't have as much of a backlog as I once did. So I can start revisiting acquisitions from the past 3 months. This box is one of them.

Meaning I havent watched BLACK DAWN since the back to back to back veiwings a couple months ago. Perhaps I'll add to this next week when I log on again, but my feelings about black dawn were these:

I loved the gigantic, almost Dovzhenko-esque landscapes. Paul Ivano's cinematography was a nice treat, particularly since I'm so used to seeing his studio-bound, artificially-lit work with Stroeheim (except GREED, which was location, yet used studio lights). So fresh, immediate, naturalistic.

I loved the massive simpicity of the whole piece-- so much said with so few words. Very poetic. I very much liked the portrayal of the sexual relationship between the boy and the girl... portrayed so naturally that the possibility of moral judgement upon the girl (for fucking this stranger at first sight) is rendered completely impossible and at very least out of place. A Completely timeless story which could have occurred in 2000 bc just as much as in Iowa tomorrow. She is a young fertile girl, lonesome, in her prime, tilling the earth and working with her hands-- sleeping with her shirt off in the great wide open is as natural as sleeping with the first man she encounters, at the first sight of him. The unassailable simplicity of the presentation makes any sort of a moral judgement completely impossible and in fact a pathetic interference with an uncorrupted natural world and series of processes which the boy & girl are privvy to in this film. The sun, coarse rustic clothing, the hills, a workhorse, wheat, hay, sweat, hunger, the hard work of harvesting, the relief of shade and cold water and the correspondingly natural urge to fuck amidst all that naturality-- all of these elements are equivelant, simple uncorrupted elements of the body cultivating it's survival via the purest, most healthy means. On the other hand the relationship is never lingered over as an emotionally overflowing love, in fact romance is hardly demonstrated. It's more the simple element added to the above list of essentials: male companionship for a needful woman, sex and conversation and caring being an additional contribution the man provides her in addition to help around the farm with his masculine labor.

I found the simplicity of the exposition, the richness of the images, very very poetic and satisfying. I thought the ending a bit klunky, but it couldn't nullify the nice surprise the piece constituted. Not sure it's a masterpiece neccessarily, but a very nice discovery. I tend to like pieces on simple timeless subjects which leave a lot of open space for the viewer to step inside of to inhabit however they please.

[HerrSchreck]

Rather than an EDIT to the last post I'll just plunk this in seperate:

Dave Hare (not the Broadway playwright) pointed out on the standard Avant thread that the Amateur As Auteur disc was an irritation, and lord do I ever want to second that. I swear ta god, those barn-door, look-at-my-pet-dog vacation 16mm pieces, these had to be the reason for the creation of the AmAsAu disc, no doubt the result of some wealthy old biddy with a fat checkbook, way way back inna old days was given her own 16mm camera by fat flush industrial daddy... and now in the Autumn Of Years, begged the series producers to put these films in the collection in return for a huge donation (of either cash, private-collection reels of some other filmmakers, or both). Probably a situation where either the "amateur auteur" was either a donator his/herself, or was a relation i e "please put those in, it would mean so much to her before she died to see her little 16mm reels placed alongside the work of Orson Welles.. those little film she made dreaming about being a filmmaker back before she became vicious upon receipt of her inheritance and she had real dreams & aspirations which could not be simulated through the expenditure of money... yes those little family summer-home films which we all told her were very artistic and showed promise-- they are in focus after all-- I can't tell you how much it would mean to me to be able to wheel her inta the living room and pop on our dvd player and show her her footage of little Buscuit scampering around barking at Slippers the cat being presented as Key American Avant Garde, like part of cinema history. Be sport & do this for us willya? I'll give you a million dollars for it if you do.."

[LightBulbFilm]

Edison's Frankenstein is SOMEWHAT unseen. The only known print of it is owned by some rich asshole who refuses to give it out to studios for distribution. He says $10 million is what he wants for the copy he has. I can understand this, seeing how it's the only known copy of it in existence, but I mean... He can't be a true lover of cinema. If he loved it so much he would let it live... Dammit. There is a DVD of it (That the guy released) but from what I hear it has his trademark watermarked on it throughout the 14 minute run of it... The cock head.

[zedz]

Dave Hare (not the Broadway playwright) pointed out on the standard Avant thread that the Amateur As Auteur disc was an irritation, and lord do I ever want to second that. I swear ta god, those barn-door, look-at-my-pet-dog vacation 16mm pieces, these had to be the reason for the creation of the AmAsAu disc, no doubt the result of some wealthy old biddy with a fat checkbook, way way back inna old days was given her own 16mm camera by fat flush industrial daddy... and now in the Autumn Of Years, begged the series producers to put these films in the collection in return for a huge donation (of either cash, private-collection reels of some other filmmakers, or both).

I'll have to revisit the offending disc, but I think I was underwhelmed like you (though this is where you go to find the inimitable Gus and his goosee, isn't it? and aren't some of the Cornells on there too?). I don't attribute its weakness to the mercenary inclinations of Posner / Image, however, but rather to the idiosyncracies of Posner's overall thesis. This is one of the weirder and least convincing strands of his 'Unseen Cinema' opus (which, don't forget, originated as a labour-of-love curatorial project rather than a potentially revenue-generating DVD box-set), but I'm sure he's perfectly sincere about the significance of these films in the so-called history of so-called avant-garde cinema, considering how amorphous his definitions are in both respects.

As mystifying as some of the inclusions are, there are some pretty mystifying exclusions as well. I was bowled over by the sheer Dada of Charley Bowers' There It is on the Film Archives set (and have ordered the Image DVD of his work). It's mind-boggling to me that this guy's work wasn't deemed 'avant-garde' enough for Unseen Cinema. It's like a Spike Milligan fever-dream.

[unclehulot]

Edison's Frankenstein is SOMEWHAT unseen. The only known print of it is owned by some rich asshole who refuses to give it out to studios for distribution. He says $10 million is what he wants for the copy he has. I can understand this, seeing how it's the only known copy of it in existence, but I mean... He can't be a true lover of cinema. If he loved it so much he would let it live... Dammit. There is a DVD of it (That the guy released) but from what I hear it has his trademark watermarked on it throughout the 14 minute run of it... The cock head.

WAS owned. Detlaff died a year or so back. Don't know the fate of the film now.

[HerrSchreck]

Edison's Frankenstein is SOMEWHAT unseen. The only known print of it is owned by some rich asshole who refuses to give it out to studios for distribution. He says $10 million is what he wants for the copy he has. I can understand this, seeing how it's the only known copy of it in existence, but I mean... He can't be a true lover of cinema. If he loved it so much he would let it live... Dammit. There is a DVD of it (That the guy released) but from what I hear it has his trademark watermarked on it throughout the 14 minute run of it... The cock head.

WAS owned. Detlaff died a year or so back. Don't know the fate of the film now.

I have a VHS dupe of the print he's talking about. It's like watching TV w the station logo placed down in the corner. The age and the subject matter make it more haunting than the actual onscreen rendering of the monster.. who looks more like a half-eaten bloated corpse walking around. I think he stuck the icon down there because-- as the film was so fiendishly wanted by folks-- he was afraid pirated copies would be ripped from his own. There are other ways of securing your own version a la "special contents" of his edition, by placing some nicks & marks that come & go to prove his print is his print.

PS-- zedz-- those sound experiments are not on the amateurs tape, are they (EDIT, WHOOPS THEY ARE) My favorite Cornell is CAROUSEL: ANIMAL OPERA which is on another disc. That childrens party was not my favorite cornell in the collection.

[denti alligator]

Is the catalogue that can be bought for this worth getting? Does it function like an expanded booklet that we don't actually get with the box set?

[Adam]

Is the catalogue that can be bought for this worth getting? Does it function like an expanded booklet that we don't actually get with the box set?

The catalogue is, if we are talking about the same thing, really an accompaniment to the traveling series of 15 film programs that was the precurser to the DVD set. It is a nice little catalogue, 160 pp, ending with the contents of each of those programs.

[the front cover has a photo from Robert Florey's THE LOVE OF ZERO.]

The contents are a series of short essays on films and commentaries by filmmakers. Some are more general; most are on specific films. I think none of it repeats anything in the DVD box. Some essays are:

Busby Berkeley and America's Pioneer Abstract Filmmakers by Cecile Starr
The Attractions of Nature in Early Cinema by Scott mcDonald
Discussing D.W. Griffith by Jay Leyda
Robert Florey and the Hollywood Avant-Garde by Brian Taves
My Films, by J.S. Watson, Jr.
Making TWENTY-FOUR DOLLAR ISLAND, by Robert Flaherty

There are many more - that's not even 1/4 of them.

When the shows were traveling, the catalogue sold for $15. I would say that anything up to that price, if you are interested in this stuff, is well worth it. (I'm holding it on my desk as I type)