view
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari [The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari] (Robert Wiene, 1920)
Dec
25
Hanukkah + Christmas
Cesare (Conrad Veidt) escapes with Jane (Lil Dagover) in his arms. Composition and distribution of light and shadow – much of which was painted directly on the set pieces – strike a strong resemblance with the oldest known survived photograph by Nicéphore Niépce from ca. 1822 – 1827. DP: Willy Hameister.
A favourite scene featuring light for Hanukkah and Christmas.
Alan “How long will I live?”
Cesare “Till the break of dawn.”
view
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
The two friends setting off on their track of the Swiss mountains. Their chalet can be seen in the foreground. DP: Hans-Jakob Siber.
view
Report (Bruce Conner, 1967)
Nov
23
1963
view
The End (Christopher Maclaine, 1953)
Nov
13
ice cream
A man suggestively licks an ice cream cone. DP: Jordan Belson.
view
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
view
Wieczne pretensje [Permanent Objections] (Grzegorz Królikiewicz, 1975)
Jul
29
kotlet mielony
view
Doktor Glas [Doctor Glas] (Mai Zetterling, 1968)
May
27
akvavit
A man (Per Oscarsson) raises a glass and peers though its ribs and liquids. DP: Rune Ericson.
view
Hägringen [Mirage] (Peter Weiss, 1959)
Feb
12
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.
view
A Zed & Two Noughts [Z+00 / ZOO] (Peter Greenaway, 1985)
Dec
27
Visit The Zoo Day
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.
“In the land of the legless, the one-legged woman is queen.”
view
Mahagonny [Number 18] (Harry Smith, 1980)
Dec
22
राष्ट्रिय गणित दिवस
A kaleidoscopic New York street scene. Mahagonny was “made to be displayed with four separate 16 mm projectors onto a single screen or onto two billiard tables suspended over a boxing ring” (Kevin Arrow, see link below).
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
