One of the films I'd like to see again... Sans Soleil ("Sunless", 1983) is Chris Marker's (born in 1921 and maybe best known for La Jetée) famous documentary/experimental film/travelogue/cinematic essay/meditation on human memory; somewhere in the borderlines of dream, surrealism and science fiction. Visiting Africa, San Francisco and having a special emphasis on Japan, that home of the hyperreal, taking the viewer to manga shops and a special shrine dedicated to cats.
My favourite Bollywood film music collections so far have been Indiavision (2005) and now Bollywood Funk (2000, on UK's Outcaste Records).
More groovy Hindi weirdness from the 60s, 70s and 80s; with blaxploitation film wah-wah guitars, analogue synths, big orchestral interludes, the sugar-sweet vocals from the playback singer legends like Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar, and some feral yells and insane laughter!
Film clips to some of these tracks found from YouTube:
pHinnWeb has already featured War Game and Privilege, controversial "mockumentary"-type of 1960s films by the British director Peter Watkins. Common for Watkins' films were political, dystopian and even apocalyptic themes, critical of mass media, mind control and propaganda, and often taking place in a bleak near-future science fiction setting. Heavily reflecting on the heated political atmosphere of the Vietnam war and the Kent State massacre era, his 1971 film follows a group of dissidents who have chosen -- instead of a lengthy jail sentence -- to spend three days in the desert attempting to reach an American flag, as a sort of a survival game, while chased by police and National Guardsmen as part of their field training.
Before Privilege, Peter Watkins had already stirred controversy with his 1965 nuclear war pseudo-documentary The War Game, which was banned by the BBC, who considered it too shocking for its graphic nature depicting realistically the possible consequences of a nuclear attack.
I told you last August about Peter Watkins' 1967 film Privilege, lamenting the poor distribution status of this cult sci-fi film about the connections of pop music and fascism. Now one of those friendly YouTube pirates has brought this rare film online for everyone's watching pleasure, and this is what this person writes as accompaniment to the film:
"Privilege, a cruelly compelling, often brilliant film ... the real star ... is director Peter Watkins, only 31, who must get credit for this acidly anti-establishment film ... the quasi-documentary touches he mastered on BBC money are sharply and effectively in evidence. And in his first full-length film, he shows he can use color with startling success. No doubt about it: Watkins is on his way.' (Playboy)
'This is a bitter, uncompromising movie, and although it isn't quite successful it is fascinating and important. Watkins made a mistake in bringing the newsreel techniques of The War Game into a narrative film, where a director should be able to make his point with his story, the performances and the photography. Still the movie isn't a failure so much as an interesting episode in the career of a director who I think will eventually be ranked with Fellini and Bergman.' (Roger Ebert, Nov 1st, 1967)
The national cinema circuit in the UK, J. Arthur Rank, refused to show this "immoral and un-Christian picture which mocked the Church, defied authority and encouraged youth in lewd practices". Universal Pictures withdrew the film after brief screenings in a few countries, and the film has been rarely shown since - very occasionally on TV. Universal Pictures in Hollywood even refuse to let the director rent or buy a copy of this film, even on VHS.
(I apologize for the godawful picture quality, it's the only version of the film I got, since Universal still refuses to give this film a PROPER DVD-release... So please see this as a chance to watch this rare film!) ..."
La Jetée ("The Jetty", 1962) is a 28-minute post-nuclear war/time travel sci-fi film by Chris Marker (b. 1921), consisting entirely of black & white still images. La Jetée was remade in 1995 by ex-Monty Python member Terry Gilliam as Twelve Monkeys.
Terayama Shuji (1935-1983) was an experimental Japanese film-maker known for his often controversial works. His 1972 film Emperor Tomato Ketchup also gave its name to Stereolab's 1996 album.
Maya Deren (1917-1961) was an American experimental film-maker, also a choreographer, dancer, poet, writer and photographer. Above you can see her first and best-known film Meshes of the Afternoon, a haunting, surreal study in stark black and white.
Several cultural critics have pointed out the connections between rock music (+ pop music in general) and fascism. Rock has always prided itself as a music of freedom and personal expression, but when one starts to think about it, there are not really so many differences between gigantic stadium rock concerts and Nazi events like Nuremberg Rally; with their massive stage settings, the hypnotic, stomping rhythms; power trips for the masses making the rapturous fans raise their fists in the air... Fascism makes use of the underlying frustrations (social, economical, political, sexual), inhibited aggressions and latent violence mass society tends to create in its members -- the same fuel which can also be found behind rock's emotional energy. Drawing such comparisons even closer to the point, one such charismatic rock star as the late Freddie Mercury of Queen was called by his detractors "the Adolf Hitler of rock'n'roll". One can only ponder all the potential there to mass control and manipulation.
Peter Watkins' 1967 film Privilege, starring Paul Jones (of the band Manfred Mann) and Jean Shrimpton (a "supermodel" of her own era), is a dystopian tale about a near-future pop star whose success is exploited for their own means by the powers that be. A totalitarian government and church well understand the importance of Steven Shorter (Jones), an extremely popular singer, to their own efforts of mass control, pacifying the youth dissent and religious domination.
"Aren't you using this young man to further your own agenda?" a clergyman in the film is asked. He replies: "Well, in the middle ages the church used the inquisition to further our own agenda, and we think this is a lot less painful!"
Rock's undercurrent of violence is also exploited by the film's fascistic government: in one concert sequence, the crowd watches Shorter sing a plaintive plea for love and understanding while locked in a cage surrounded by police officers armed with clubs. It is said that at least one scene in the film was copied by Stanley Kubrick for his Clockwork Orange.
Filmed in a quasi-documentary way, Privilege was Watkins' only British feature film, and it was both a commercial and critical flop in its time. Privilege has since gained a cult film status, though, even if seeing it these days can be extremely difficult, only semi-bootleg DVD or video copies being available at the moment. (For me, this is another one I have liked to see for years but haven't, because of this poor distribution status.)
Peter Watkins (born 1935) is known for such controversial film works as The War Game (1965), which with its disturbing scenes depicting the effects of nuclear war was banned by BBC. The Gladiators (1969) was filmed and distributed in Sweden, being another bleak sci-fi satire, this time foreseeing the so-called reality TV phenomenon, when the world governments decide channel man's aggressive instincts to a more controllable manner and start televised contests (with sponsors and commercials) between teams of selected soldiers from each country.
Diabolik is an Italian comicbook character, a super-villain created in 1962 by sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani. Diabolik's partner in crime in these amoral adventures is the ultra-cool Eva Kant (reminiscing in these comics somehow Kim Novak of Hitchcock's Vertigo). Some issues of Diabolik were published also in Finnish between 1975 and 1978.
The acclaimed Italian horror director Mario Bava directed in 1968 a stylish movie adaptation called Danger: Diabolik -- starring John Phillip Law (of Barbarella fame) and Marisa Mell -- which has reached a cult film status.
(Click here if you can't see this film trailer of Kiss Me, Deadly.)
The controversial American crime writer Mickey Spillane just died this week. Known for his extreme right-wing opinions and the violence, nihilism and misogynism of his books, the very persona of Spillane paints a bleak picture of the post-World War II American psychopathology. Though I've never read any of his books (and probably never will until I shall ever become even more cynical, jaded and vengeful than I already am), I've found Robert Aldrich's aptly hard-boiled 1955 adaptation Kiss Me, Deadly one of my favourite pieces of film noir. Reflecting the 1950s Zeitgeist of atomic paranoia and anti-Communism, and with its suitably apocalyptic climax when the nuclear(?) Pandora's box will finally be opened, this nihilistic journey of Spillane's sadistic and truly dislikeable anti-hero detective character Mike Hammer (played by Ralph Meeker) reveals something really fundamental about the mindset of this era. Va-va-voom!
There's hardly a more suitable director for this one than Robert Aldrich (1918-1983), known for his controversial films often verging on nihilism; the star-studded war movie Dirty Dozen (1967) probably the most famous of them. Aldrich's films are often about a group of tough, masculine men trying to survive in a harsh, violent environment but he also directed melodramatic (though not less cynical) psychodramas featuring women in such works as Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962), Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) or The Killing of Sister George (1968).
Back to Mike Hammer, a totally different Spillane adaptation is Richard T. Heffron's I, The Jury from 1982, with slick Armand Assante as Mike Hammer and one-time Bond girl Barbara Carrera as the female protagonist. In my teenage video nasty years I actually found this one quite entertaining with all its fast-paced gory action and sordid sex scenes (the plot involves a sex clinic with prostitute-like characters offering an interesting form of "therapy"). But then, the film was scripted by Hollywood's bad boy Larry Cohen, known for such cult shockers as It's Alive, with some social agenda full of satirical picks on consumerism and corporate values, so Cohen probably well understood the garish sleaziness hiding behind Spillanean gung-ho patriotic worldview. I haven't seen this film for years, though, so I can't really assess any of its worth now.
Incidentally, the apocalyptic destruction scene at the final climax of Kiss Me, Deadly (with its ghastly screaming sounds) makes me somehow think of the infamous slow-motion ending of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970) where Daria Halprin's character imagines the destruction of a luxury villa, being simultaneously the symbolic demolition of the American bourgeois way of life, with all the exploding fridges and flying Wonderbread packages. While Pink Floyd's 'Come In Number 51 Your Time Is Up' (a reworking of their 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene') plays in the background -- what a beautiful scene: one of my all-time favourites, absolutely. (Too bad the film itself is considered one of Antonioni's worst.) -- Anyway, I wonder if the makers of Koyaanisqatsi ever saw this one?
Klein, who has a reputation of a mean operator, is no stranger to controversy himself: as his capacity as the manager of both The Rolling Stones and The Beatles (after the death of Brian Epstein), Klein eventually managed to alienate both bands and their inner circle. Court cases ensued. As for Jodorowsky's films, Klein has sat for years on them, refusing to give rights to their distribution in any format. (And I heard that he also owns the rights to ? & The Mysterians' music, which is the reason their classic '96 Tears' won't be heard on CD!) Apparently, an agreement has now been made.
As for the films themselves, it's quite hard to give a comprehensible description of any of them. Think of Luis Buñuel's surrealism combined with the exuberance of Federico Fellini, with some David Lynch thrown in, and you are not nearly anywhere close. El Topo could be faintly called a psychedelic spaghetti western with mystical, occult and grotesque overtones. This cult film gave an initial spark to the "Midnight Movies" phenomenon, receiving praises from such people as John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The Holy Mountain is even a deeper mystical quest, featuring at the end of it an example of the Brechtian "breaking of the fourth Wall" when the protagonists find out they are characters in a movie: "Lights -- camera -- this is Maya". Fando y Lis, Jodorowsky's first film incited a riot at Acapulco film festival 1968, and the director was nearly deported from Mexico for his troubles, echoing the experiences of another lover of controversy, Luis Buñuel.
Jodorowsky also worked for the planned mid-70s version of Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic Dune. H.R. Giger, best known for Alien, was supposed to create film's designs. This version eventually fell through, and Dune was finally filmed by David Lynch in 1984 -- becoming the biggest flop of his career. Alongside his film career Jodorowsky is also known as the scriptwriter of Jean "Moebius" Giraud's Incal comics, another feast for the fans of Jodorowsky's psychedelic-mystical style.
And finally, here is info about Jodorowsky's planned "metaphysical spaghetti gangster film", King Shot, starring Marilyn Manson and Nick Nolte and to be filmed in Mexico.
"The only performance that makes it, that really makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness."
Woe on all you Finnish people who missed this one, shown last night on MTV3 channel.
This nasty and pervy cult flick grinds Jorge Luis Borges, Hassan-I-Sabbah (the mythical predecessor of Osama bin Laden and the founder of the sect of Assassins/Hashishins), the Kray Twins (the notorious gangsters of the 1960s London), magic mushrooms, mixing up of gender identities and psychedelic decadence into one ugly and beautiful cut-up carnival, à la William S. Burroughs. Alongside these references there are also visual tributes to such artists as Francis Bacon. A psycho-sexual mindfuck of the highest order, courtesy of the late Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg (who later on directed more cult movies: Walkabout, Don't Look Now and David Bowie's finest film moment, The Man Who Fell To Earth, among them).
Among those visually striking scenes there's one particularly disturbing where we see a bullet making its way through the brain, only to end up to a photograph depicting Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian master of literary labyrinths, whose works heavily influenced this movie.
The controversial Performance was originally filmed in 1968 but only released in 1970. It is said that the sex scenes between Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton got so heavy that the scenes cut from the theatre version were shown with great success at an adult film festival in Amsterdam.
Mick Jagger's own music video-like performance (sic) of 'Memo From Turner' is particularly memorable. (Hmmm, might this be one potential future cover version for Kompleksi...?)
Memo From Turner (Jagger/Richards)
Didn't I see you down in San Antone on a hot and dusty night? We were eating eggs in Sammy's when the black man there drew his knife. Aw, you drowned that Jew in Rampton as he washed his sleeveless shirt. You know, that Spanish-speaking gentlemen, the one we all call Kurt.
Come now, gentlemen, I know there's some mistake. How forgetful I'm becoming, now you fixed your business straight.
I remember you in Hemlock Road in nineteen fifty-six. You were a faggy little leather boy with a smaller piece of stick. You're a lashing, smashing hunk of man; Your sweat shines sweet and strong. Your organs working perfectly, but there's a part that's not screwed on.
Weren't you at the Coke convention back in nineteen sixty-five? You're the misbred, grey executive I've seen heavily advertised. You're the great, grey man whose daughter licks policemen's buttons clean. You're the man who squats behind the man who works the soft machine.
Come now, gentlemen, your love is all I crave. You'll still be in the circus when I'm laughing, laughing in my grave.
When the old men do the fighting and the young men all look on. And the young girls eat their mothers' meat from tubes of plasticon. Be wary of these, my gentle friends, of all the skins you breed. They have a tasty habit -- they eat the hands that bleed.
So remember who you say you are and keep your noses clean. Boys will be boys and play with toys, so be strong with your beast. Oh Rosie dear, doncha think it's queer, so stop me, if you please. The baby is dead, my lady said, "You gentlemen, why you all work for me?"
I'm well aware that Bollywood (India's extremely proficient counterpart to Hollywood) was in vogue among hipsters (or the people who think they are those) already a couple of years ago, but I only got really into Bollywood's amazing soundtrack music, when I found from local library Metso this 16-track compilation of Indian film music from the period of 1966-1984.
Indiavision (2005) is a French-compiled selection of those weird and wonderful Bollywood film composers and singers. What fascinates me in these songs is how they take influences from Western film and popular music (rock, pop, psychedelia, disco...), mix them with their own musical heritage and instrumentation, and turn them into something that is simultaneously innovative, strange (at least to our Western ears), funny and beautiful.
Among sitars, tablas and Western-type of film orchestras with strings and brass you can hear spiky 60s and early 70s type of wah-wah pedal guitars and even some analogue synthesizer sounds. The songs are in Hindi but every now and then include some suitable catch phrases in English. Most bizarre this is in 'I Love You' by Usha Iyer and Asha Bhosle, where the lyrics "I really love you / I really do" are combined together with a cheery "Hare rama, hare Krishna" mantra; then at the end of the song one of the singers asks in hipster English: "Can we go a little faster, man?", receives an affirmative "Yeah!", and the tempo of the track duly speeds up.
Strange tempo changes are not the only things making this not too similar to Western pop; the songs often consist of various parts of different styles which follow each other in a surreal, even dream-like logic (just like the plots of most Bollywood films). These songs in their style, making one think of late-60s psychedelia, go somewhere beyond cheap exotica or "world music" styles. Like Brazilian Tropicália, this is truly a sound of international fusion of taking Western styles and mutating them with home-grown influences into something new and amazing. Since this compilation stops already to the year 1984, I can't tell how Indian film music today is, but if they keep following the tradition at display here, it really must be something to check out.
The 1982 film Tron -- which was a pioneering work in using computer graphics extensively in mainstream cinema (and with Wendy Carlos' musical score too) -- is these days considered a proto-cyberpunk classic. Here is a mash-up video of Tron and Depeche Mode's 'Suffer Well'.
