dermonexus

Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006)


Une collection particulière Dir. Walerian Borowczyk (1973)

A representation of Mandiargues’s collection of pornographic items

L’amour monstre de tous les temps Dir. Walerian Borowczyk (1977) “Matter is the most passive and defenseless essence in the cosmos. Anyone can mould or shape it; it obeys everybody. All attempts at organizing matter are transient and temporary, easy to reverse and to dissolve.” —Bruno Schulz

Bringing objects to "life" is the essence of Borowczyk's cinema. Buster Keaton aside, he is cinema's greatest prop specialist. Borowczyk has made clear his "positive feelings towards objects", not to mention a mania for those crafted in the 19th century. Why? Because in these objects we still find "traces of man's hand".

Nonetheless, hands are conspicuously absent from Borowczyk's early shorts. At first glance Renaissance (1963) and Le Phonograph (1969) appear eerily materialistic. After the catastrophic explosions that both initiate and complete Renaissance, the charred piles of wood and twisted scrap metal may well stand as "evidence" of the fate that has met the bodies of which these objects once belonged. But they are only wrecked objects. Nonetheless, we're amused (if not comforted) by the knowledge that the cycle will occur again (eternally!). Also, the faint sound beneath the rubble of smashed up wax drums and broken glass suggests that there may be a ghost in Le phonograph after all. Borowczyk isn't pessimistic, rather "catastrophic". Such catastrophism belies a worry that craftsmanship is dying. "Vivacity" is being displaced by what Borowczyk describes as the "mechanical society" - one based on excess.

If Borowczyk's overt preoccupation is with the 19th century fin-de-siecle era, then it's one undercut by motifs of 20th century excesses: the atom bomb "gags" in Le theatre de Monsieur et Madame Kabal (1967) and the concentration camps in Les jeux des anges (1964) and Goto, l'ile d'amour (1968). But images of overproduction and saturation suggest commercial excess too. If the latter result in a "dulling of our senses", Borowczyk's obsessive studies of handcrafted objects now appear as genuinely "erotic", the accent less on their symbolic properties, more on the visual qualities, their sounds and textures.

Of the shorts, Rosalie (1966), Gavotte (1967), Diptyque (1967) and Une Collection Particulière (1972) involve at least one visible human element, albeit one often obscured. To act in front of Borowczyk's camera, the actor has to surrender his (or usually her) will entirely, and become, not so much one of Bresson's "models", but one of Keaton's "props". But like Bresson, Borowczyk discarded character "psychology" as superficial - he's more interested in "how" rather than "why". A fascination for objects can degenerate into fetishism when it serves little or no narrative "function". Barthes gives us an idea of what that function could be in an essay on Bataille's Histoire de l'Oeil:

"How can an object have a story? Well, it can pass from hand to hand, giving rise to the sort of tame fancy authors call The History of my Pipe or Memoirs of an Armchair, or alternatively it can pass from image to image, in which case its story is that of migration, the cycle of the avatars it passes through, far removed from its original being, down the path of a particular imagination that distorts but never drops it."

If we grant a "poetics" of cinema, then it's obvious that Borowczyk's shorts are of the second kind. Of the features, the most successful "object stories" are neither entirely fanciful nor metaphorical, as Barthes later has object "novels" and "poems", but rather amalgams of the two. For example, Goto, l'ile d'amour and La Bete (1975) could be conceived as sequential transactions of binoculars and shoes, roses and corsets between human (and in the case of La Bete, not-so-human!) characters, but that would ignore the considerable metaphorical play taking place. As Ray Durgnat noted, in Goto, l'ile d'amour, Borowczyk relishes a linguistic, satirical fetishization of Grozo's tasks: brushing ch-auseurs, taking care of ch-iens and drowning mou-ch-es. In La Bete (and to a lesser extent, Dzieje Grzechu, 1975), rose petals are put to good use in female masturbatory fantasies ­ female genitalia is so often compared to rose petals (e.g. Kane's "Rosebud") ­ here Borowczyk offers a literal on-screen deflowering! —© Daniel Bird, 2003

Jerry Tartaglia Ecce Homo 1989, 7 minutes

Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) interweaves images form Jean Genet’s masterpiece, Un Chant d’Amour with images from gay male sex films. It forces the viewer to question the point of view in looking at “pornographic” images. A.I.D.S. hysteria portrays gay sex as pornographic, politically incorrect, sinful, or, at best, a public health hazard. Ecce Homo asks whether the taboo is against gay sex or against seeing gay sex.

“Each of my films portrays some aspect of gay consciousness, sexual representation, or self-identity. At the same time, each film utilizes the medium’s unique potential as visual metaphor. I am not very interested in creating narrative forms, which generally are used to show how gay people are supposed to become lavender carbon copies of straight people. Instead, I work with short, personal, experimental forms which explore and celebrate another kind of conscious human identity.” - Jerry Tartaglia, NYC 1995

Marina Abramoviç the star 1999



Biography that is a blend of realism and the imaginary to retell the life of a Yugoslav performer, Marina Abramovic. With rituals, based on the use of her own body, she explores the bounds of her physical and psychological resistance.

This is not, however, mere reproduction of Abramovic's presentations, but rather of building a new reality: the performances are translated into cinema images and built into the fictional context of the film.

Marina Abramovic plays herself, and assumes different forms that repeatedly distort or obscure her real identity. Memories blend with fantasy, dreams, artistic rituals, and day-to-day life - as if she were trying to look both ways at the same time, like a head with two faces, one turned towards the past and the other towards the future. This is an endeavor to discover herself and also to lend form to the creative process, with a narrative that frees itself from chronology and follows along with only image and sound.

Director : Pierre Coulibeuf
creenplay : Marina Abramovic, Pierre Coulibeuf
Cinematographer : Dominique Le Rigoleur
Edition : Thierry Rouden
Cast : Marina Abramovic
Producer : Chantal Delanoë
Production : Regards Production Wega-Film (Austria), Scarabee Film Productions ( Holland), Institut National de I'Audiovisuel (France)





Jean Genet (1910-1986) Un Chant d'Amour 1950, Runtime: 25 minutes



(From Wikipedia entry: Un Chant d'Amour)

Un Chant d'Amour is French writer Jean Genet's only film, which he directed in 1950. Because of its explicit (though artistically presented) homosexual content, the 26-minute movie was long banned and was also disowned by Genet later in his life.

The plot is set in a French prison, where a prison guard takes voyeuristic pleasure in observing the prisoners perform masturbatory sexual acts. In two adjacent cells, there are an older Algerian-looking man and a handsome convict in his twenties. The older man is in love with the younger one, rubbing himself against the wall and sharing his cigarette smoke with his beloved through a straw.

The prison guard, apparently jealous of the prisoner's relationship, enters the older convict's cell, beats him, and makes him suck on his gun in an unmistakably sexual fashion. But the inmate drifts off into a fantasy where he and his object of desire roam the countryside. In the final scene it becomes clear that the guard's power is no match for the intensity of attraction between the prisoners, even though their relationship is not consummated.

Genet does not use sound in his film, forcing the viewer to completely focus on closeups of faces, armpits, and semi-erect penises. Originally produced as a porn movie of sorts, the film with its highly sexualized atmosphere has later been recognized as a formative factor for works such as the films by Andy Warhol.





Pipilotti Rist (b. 1965) Pipilotti Rist - Video Works



List of videos included in the Rist compilation:
* 1992 - Als der Bruder meiner Mutter geboren wurde, duftete es nach wilden Birnenbluten vor dem braungebrannten Sims - 4 Min.
* 1999 - Aujourd'hui
* 1993 - Blutclip - 2:50 Min.
* 1988 - (Entlastungen) Pipilottis Fehler - 11:10 Min.
* 2003 - I Want To See How You See
* 1995 - I`m a Victim Of This Song - 5 Min.
* 1986 - I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much - 7:45 Min.
* ? - Lullaby
* 1998 - Oasis Dance, Sipping My Desert--Santa Fe, New Mexico
* 1996 - Mutaflor
* 1992 - Pickelporno - 12 Min.
* 1998 - Regen Spot Sverige
* 1987 - Sexy Sad I - 4:36 Min.
* 1990 - You Called Me Jacky - 4 Min





Yoko Ono (b. 1933) Fly 1971



Fly was 19 minutes in length and, as with Up your legs filmed during the same New York visit, also took two days to film in a New York attic. Although only one person was filmed, in contrast to the 331 gathered for the Legs film, Fly was a more complicated project.

John and Yoko asked New York actress Virginia Lust to lie down naked whilst they filmed a fly exploring her body. Approximately 200 flies were used and each had to be stunned with a special gas. The film showed a fly traversing the girl's body from her toes to her head, exploring every part. It was claimed that Virginia Lust also had to be sedated during the filming.

Further filming of the Lennon's also took place during this period in the Bowery, rare footage includes John playing guitar.

From Fluxfilms

09 Yoko Ono - Eye Blink (1966)

14 Yoko Ono - One (1966)
15 Yoko Ono - Eye Blink (1966)


16 Yoko Ono - Four (1967)





Carolee Schneeman (b. 1939) Fuses 1965.

Self-shot. 16mm film. 18 min.

A silent film of collaged and painted sequences of lovemaking between Schneemann and her then partner, composer James Tenney; observed by the cat, Kitch.

"...I wanted to see if the experience of what I saw would have any correspondence to what I felt-- the intimacy of the lovemaking... And I wanted to put into that materiality of film the energies of the body, so that the film itself dissolves and recombines and is transparent and dense-- as one feels during lovemaking... It is different from any pornographic work that you've ever seen-- that's why people are still looking at it! And there's no objectification or fetishization of the woman." - Carolee Schneemann





Jack Smith (1932-1989) Flaming Creatures 1963
Normal Love 1963

Jack Smith in Retrospect BY GARY MORRIS

Not long ago, Fran Lebowitz invoked the sad-comic image of a sailor disembarking in New York, heading to Times Square, and experiencing total psychic dislocation at the replacement of the hookers, porn shops, and bars of yore by the Virgin MegaStore and Mickey Mouse. True, New York's place at the head of the table of culture is now debatable, but t'was not always so. In the early '60s, the Big Apple wasn't the least bit wormy. The visual arts were particularly blessed, with off-off-Broadway thriving, performance art and happenings starting to spring up, and cinematic renegades gaining increasing notoriety as American culture, prodded by a few brave souls, finally began to question itself.

Perhaps the most prodding of the pack was queer film artiste Jack Smith (1932-1989). The emphasis on film is misleading and limiting, however. Smith, who was raised in trailers in Ohio and Texas before landing in New York in 1950, was also a brilliant writer, wit, a pioneer in what came to be called performance art and in being an early proponent of using color in fine art photography. But the writings are gulaged in obscure small-press publications, the photographs are hard to find, and the performance pieces - with a couple of exceptions - were not recorded. (A pity since some observers of the time say his best work could be found there.)

Happily, though, his films, while rare, are extant in various states and are slowly reentering the cultural discourse through the efforts of friends and advocates. These efforts are paying off. Smith's oeuvre has played at a variety of respectable venues lately (most recently, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts), and a reassessment of at least his major works - Flaming Creatures and Normal Love - is now possible.

Flaming Creatures (1963) was not his first film; that distinction belongs to The Buzzards of Baghdad (1951-56). But it is still his most notorious, not only because it convincingly broke a number of taboos but because it was banned practically everyplace it was shown. This included, of all places, the halls of Congress, where it was unleashed by the dessicated Strom Thurmond in an anti-porn tirade. (Technically, it's still banned, but don't expect the police, or Strom, to show up at screenings.)

By all accounts, Smith was difficult but charismatic, a magical trickster manically involved in all kinds of projects at all times. Never far from poverty in spite of a few grants here and there, he was gifted in seducing actors and friends to work for free and in "appropriating" materials he needed for his art. For Creatures and the films that followed, he used cheap, sometimes discarded, color reversal stock to immortalize the drag queens, mermaids,!vampires, naked poets, and other "creatures" who populate his films. The effect is of a dream that stubbornly resists consciousness, the imagery sometimes subtle and painterly, sometimes stark and high-contrast in rendering the filmmaker's ecstasy-drenched demimondes.

Smith was raised on Hollywood kitsch, and the imagery of 1940s movie monsters, and especially his patron saint Maria Montez - to whom he built an altar and prayed - inspired him. Always a good talker, he insisted on Montez's importance as an actress to all who would listen (and there were many). He called her "the Holy One" and "the Miraculous One." After a screening of one of her films, he told a friend, "The Miraculous One was raging and flaming. Those are the standards for art."

Smith's own standards for art let him refashion Montez and the whole ethos of tinny Orientalia, low-budget intrigues, and what he called Universal's "cowhide thongs and cardboard sets" into Dionysian revels that were both wild camp and subtle polemic in upsetting an overflowing apple cart of norms: heterosexuality, narrative, social and sexual and aesthetic repressions. The world as seen in his films is a comic collage of fake history and fake culture, reduced to pathetic backdrops before which his "creatures" - vaguely gendered Frankenstein assemblages of makeup and rags - heroically writhe.

Much of his work is about the importance of style and, specifically, the pose; he practically rubs our noses in the idea that logic and progress and movement are always secondary to experience and stasis and the tableau, as long as it's beautiful. His films are at once coy and brazen. Their much-vaunted orgies and nudity (which some courts called "hardcore" with nothing in the films to support that) appear sometimes in flashes, where you have to squint to see it; or there may be a dick or a breast wagging quietly in the corner of a frame chiefly occupied by a muscular drag queen dressed as an ungainly mermaid.

As serious as he was about his own work, Smith did not view it as inviolate. His view of an ideal world of constant change and pleasure no doubt accounted for his peculiar, perhaps unique, habit of re-editing some of his work while it was being projected. According to archivist/restorationist Jerry Tartaglia, Smith developed a lightning-fast technique of removing a take-up reel during projection and resplicing whole sections before they were sucked back onto the other reel and onto the theater screen.

Flaming Creatures was shot, appropriately enough, on top of a movie theater in the Lower East Side. Unable to corral the real Maria Montez, Smith settled for Francis Francine, the drag-queen sheriff of Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys, as a stand-in. Miss Francine prances around in a brocaded turban, posing, applying lipstick, and eventually succumbing to the cruelties of a transvestite vampire who rises from an Ed Wood-style paper coffin. If this sounds like an afternoon at a particularly depraved carnival spook house, it definitely has that air. But Smith was more cunning than the cheesy dramatics, "Oriental" music, mock-orgies, and mindless make-up sessions would indicate. In reformulating his treasured favorites from the catacombs of Hollywood - in this case Maria Montez's Ali Baba - he tosses out all manner of good sense and logic, paving the way for others to do likewise after him. As arbitrary and formless as the film appears, Smith is in firm control of the frame, creating ravishingly painterly images that lull the viewer into a near-hallucinatory state. He never uses per se the collage technique common to underground film of the time, but the effect is similar through his superimposition of portions of the Ali Baba soundtrack and cheaply alluring period music.

Flaming Creatures has elaborate, hilarious dance and orgy sequences and an unforgettable discussion of makeup and penises that ends with Francis Francine asking a question that so many have pondered: "Is there a lipstick that doesn't come off when you suck cock?"

The influence of the Dietrich-Sternberg films on Smith is evident here in one major respect: nothing is quite what it seems. Even the sex of the players is indeterminate until the crucial evidence of an upraised skirt (or more likely, festooned gown) is given. The films are awash in androgyny. In Normal Love, Smith discovery and Warhol regular Mario Montez appears as a mermaid lying in repose like an odalisque, occasionally twitching, in a milk bath. She's terrorized by a fake werewolf but remains typically unfazed, protected always by the pose.

The films also have elaborate cataclysms that mock those in films like Cobra Woman and Ali Baba. Flaming Creatures ends in an earthquake created in the simplest manner imaginable - by shaking the camera. In Smith's world, even the apocalypse is just a tacky momentary diversion.

Smith's unique conceits might have remained just another private mythology, relegated to occasional basement screenings for friends, but his theatrical personality assured a far wider reach. Warhol appropriated the concept of "superstar" and fake Hollywood studio from him, and Susan Sontag made a famous defense of Flaming Creatures. Nan Goldin, Laurie Anderson, Robert Wilson, and John Waters are among those who credit Smith's singular vision with inspiring their own art.

Smith, who died in 1989 of pneumocystis, was a trickster second to none in whose remarks, even the impromptu ones - "O Maria Montez, give socialist answers to a rented world!" - lay treasures of wit and pleasure. SOURCE http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/29/jacksmith.html

# just dropped by poisbem : 12/02/2006 08:08:00 AM  0 laments