settima

experimentalfilm

Die Sage vom alten Hirten Xeudi und seinem Freund Reiman [The Legend of the Old Shepherd Xeudi and His Friend Reimann] (Hans-Jakob Siber, 1973)

Dec

11

International Mountain Day

Die Sage vom alten Hirten Xeudi und seinem Freund Reiman (1973)

The two friends setting off on their track of the Swiss mountains. Their chalet can be seen in the foreground. DP: Hans-Jakob Siber.

Mountain living on International Mountain Day. Available to watch via the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste's media archive.

Report (Bruce Conner, 1967)

Nov

23

1963

Report  (1967)

Television footage of JFK's state funeral with the caption “November 23, 1963”, superimposed over it.

The End (Christopher Maclaine, 1953)

Nov

13

ice cream

The End (1953)

A man suggestively licks an ice cream cone. DP: Jordan Belson.

KIPHO [Du musst zur KIPHO] (Julius Pinschewer, 1925)

Sep

25

1925

KIPHO (1925)

A very modern dressed woman with a small film camera. Superimposed but suggested she's filming it, a large teddybear – a bear is #Berlin's official mascot – to remind viewers that the Kino und Photoausstellung [“Film and Photo Fair”) takes place in the German capital. DP: Guido Seeber.

Die Sage vom alten Hirten Xeudi und seinem Freund Reiman [The Legend of the Old Shepherd Xeudi and His Friend Reimann] (Hans-Jakob Siber, 1973)

Sep

3

potatoes

Die Sage vom alten Hirten Xeudi und seinem Freund Reiman (1973)

Gloomy potatoes and a small metal peeler on a wooden surface. DP: Hans-Jakob Siber.

Available to watch via the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste's media archive.

Wieczne pretensje [Permanent Objections] (Grzegorz Królikiewicz, 1975)

Jul

29

kotlet mielony

Wieczne pretensje (1975)

Two men in suits in what appears to be a factory canteen. One offers the other a large piece of kotlet mielony or kotlet schabowy, a type of #schnitzel. DP: Bogdan Dziworski.

Doktor Glas [Doctor Glas] (Mai Zetterling, 1968)

May

27

akvavit

Doktor Glas (1968)

A man (Per Oscarsson) raises a glass and peers though its ribs and liquids. DP: Rune Ericson.

Hägringen [Mirage] (Peter Weiss, 1959)

Feb

12

Hägringen (1959)

An uncomfortably close close-up up of a man's mouth eating something. Tongue and mouth are visible. He's got stubble. DP: Gustaf Mandal.

A Zed & Two Noughts [Z+00 / ZOO] (Peter Greenaway, 1985)

Dec

27

Visit The Zoo Day

A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)

A zebra in a cage with the word ZOO in large blue lit capitals in the background. In the background a man. All but the lettering is black-and-white. DP: Sacha Vierny.

A zoo for National Visit The Zoo Day (USA)

“In the land of the legless, the one-legged woman is queen.”

Mahagonny [Number 18] (Harry Smith, 1980)

Dec

22

राष्ट्रिय गणित दिवस

Mahagonny (1980)

A mathematics focused movie for National Mathematics Day (India)

 

Mahagonny is filmmaker, artist, musicologist, and alchemist Harry Smith's mathematical analysis of Marcel Duchamp's masterpiece La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même [The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even], aka Le Grand Verre [The Large Glass], which was completed in 1923. It is set to Brecht and Weill's opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny [Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny] from 1930, which was an opera Smith was obsessed with while living in New York's Chelsea Hotel.

“My cinematic excreta is of four varieties:–batiked abstractions made directly on film between 1939 and 1946; optically printed non-objective studies composed around 1950; semi-realistic animated collages made as part of my alchemical labors of 1957 to 1962; and chronologically superimposed photographs of actualities formed since the latter year. All these works have been organized in specific patterns derived from the interlocking beats of the respiration, the heart and the EEG Alpha component and they should be observed together in order, or not at all, for they are valuable works, works that will live forever—they made me gray.”

– Harry Smith, via

Read an interview with Jonas Mekas about Harry Smith and his Mahagonny.