"Pre-Show for the Optical Unconscious!"

Friday, March 30, 2007

Below are the four movies screened at the U of Chi's pre-show for the Student Conference in Cinema Studies, the highlights of which are reviewed at Scarlett Cinema.

Swing You Sinners (1930)
The Mascot (1934)
Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Faust(1994)

For the record, I am a virgin to all Quay Brothers' films, but my bloated expectations of them were met when I finally saw Street of Crocodiles. It bears a striking resemblance (at least from my memory) to the Nine Inch Nails "Closer" video seen here:

Images like the heart connected to electrical mechanisms are probably the closest comparison to the creaking structure in Street, and they both take place within a contained space, the subjects moved invisibly by an external source--or at least it seems. The mechanisms take on a life of their own (they are animated, somehow), but taking a look at "Closer" for the first time in years it's clear the music video is far more concerned with carnal instincts and images of the flesh--and is punctuated affectionately by Trent Reznor's lyric "I want to fuck you like an animal." Yeah. Street of Crocodiles doesn't quite go down that route, but they both have a frightening quality that's enabled by the domains they inhabit; both pictures have a surgical look to them, with the Quay Brothers' film being the more precise vivisection of mechanical movement. The NIN video is decidedly computerized in comparison. The humid meat locker that Reznor stands in is interrupted with pictures of other humans, or at least subjects that resemble the human form, making it not nearly as Closterphobic as Street. There is a definite roof over our heads in the miniature room of Street of Crocodiles, not so with "Closer," but it evoked the memory just the same.

To see for yourself, here's clip of the Quays' film--it's much colder, and a lot creakier. (turn the sound off---that's a Tool song in the background!):

Contemporary Short Work Animation, Univeristy of Chicago Animation Series

Friday, February 16, 2007



This was a night of animated shorts from the years spanning 1999-2006. But don't quote me on that because the U of Chi. coordinators ran out of programs before I could get one. My memory hasn't retained the titles of the films, let alone their release dates. Such is life, and I'm over it if you are. Actually, I'm over it anyway.

There were about 5 films that ran for about an hour, all of them works left undistributed (at least to my knowledge), so it was, in other words, a great opportunity to see some underground stuff. The picture above is from a film that consisted of single copies of painted portraits, which were then smeared with different layers of paint. Each shot revealed the layers of brushstrokes, but in reverse order until the face in the frame morphed back to its original form. The best way to describe it is as a cross between Stan Brakhage and Richard Linklater. Imagine physical lines of color that move ala Waking Life (2001), and have the same hypnotic effect as something like Mothlight (1963).