What I watched: week of January 20, 2014

Impressions of Expo 67, dir. William Brind, 1967, Canada

Her	Spike Jonze	2013	US	DCP	4
The Camera: Je or Le Camera: I	Babette Mangolte	1977	US	16mm	2
Escape From Tomorrow	Randy Moore	2013	US	File	1
Phantom of the Paradise	Brian De Palma	1974	US	File	3
Angst	Gerald Kargl	1983	Austria	File	5
Women's Hands	Janos Xantus	1981	Hungary	File	4
Lethe	Lewis Klahr	2009	US	VDrome	3
The Set	Frank Brittain	1970	Australia	35mm	4
Score	Radley Metzger	1972	US/Yugoslavia	Blu-ray	4
Hot Times	Jim McBride	1974	US	35mm	3
Mario Banana (No. 2)	Andy Warhol	1964	US	16mm	3
I, A Man	Andy Warhol	1967	US	16mm	3
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice	Paul Mazursky	1969	US	35mm	3
Hunger	Peter Foldes	1974	Canada	NFB	5
Alouette	Norman McLaren, Rene Jodoin	1944	Canada	NFB	3
V for Victory	Norman McLaren	1941	Canada	NFB	3
Five for Four	Norman McLaren	1942	Canada	NFB	3
Les Raquetteurs	Michel Brault, Gilles Groulx	1958	Canada	NFB	4
The Big Swim	Gilles Carle	1964	Canada	NFB	4
The Rink	Gilles Carle	1962	Canada	NFB	5
Opening Speech: McLaren	Norman McLaren	1961	Canada	NFB	3
Pen Point Percussion	Norman McLaren	1951	Canada	NFB	4
Dots	Norman McLaren	1940	Canada	YouTube	3
Loops	Norman McLaren	1940	Canada	YouTube	3
Universe	Colin Low, Roman Kroitor	1960	Canada	NFB	4
Impressions of Expo 67	William Brind	1967	Canada	NFB	5
The Canadian Pavillion, Expo 67	Marc Beaudet	1967	Canada	NFB	4
In the Labyrinth	Colin Low, Roman Kroitor, Hugh O'Connell	1967/1979	Canada	NFB	4
The City (Osaka)	Kaj Pindal	1970	Canada	NFB	5

Another huge week, as usual. This week was also full of snowstorms and cold weather which made for plenty of marathon viewing. As for new films, Her did well by me, mostly because of the production design which was fantastic. I was highly anticipating Escape From Tomorrow since the controversy sparked by its premiere at Sundance 2013 but I apparently thought it was going to be a much different film than it turned out to be (which was schlocky, poorly acted and visually unimpressive with a clunky, out of place orchestral score to boot). 

The Camera: Je or Le Camera: I, dir. Babette Mangolte, 1977, US, 16mm

I went to Anthology Film Archives with some colleagues to see Babette Mangolte's rare 1977 feature film The Camera: Je or Le Camera: I which screened in conjunction with The Whitney's exhibition Rituals of Rented Island: Object Theater, Loft Performance, and the New Psychodrama—Manhattan, 1970–1980. It was a challenging film for me, and one that I didn't connect with very well. But I did enjoy Mangolte's street cinematography, rushing along a bombed-out 1970s Lower East Side with the camera at peripheral angles, giving the viewer oblique views of the street, architecture and passers-by.  

The Set, dir. Frank Brittain, 1970, Australia, 35mm

Once again, Free to Love: The Cinema of the Sexual Revolution ruled my week. The Set was a rare, somewhat soap opera-ish erotic drama from Australia with a killer soundtrack by Sven Libaek. The 35mm print from the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia was wonderful. Radley Metzger attended a screening of his 1972 film Score and explained his motivations for making his artistic erotic films and why it was necessary to go into hardcore pornography following the porn chic movement. Jim McBride's Hot Times (aka My Erotic Fantasies, aka A Hard Day for Archie) was a pretty fun teen sex romp before that genre became ubiquitous the following decade with Porky's. 

Norman McLaren in Pen Point Percussion

The NFB website and Roku channel keep me busy with all the wonderful films from their vast library. There's plenty Norman McLaren, whose innovative films I know I should be watching systematically, but I always seem to pick random ones here and there. Pen Point Percussion was an informative primer on McLaren's direct sound technique (used on Dots and Loops, which is perhaps the inspiration for the name of this album) which I'd like to try myself on some 35mm. I liked Peter Foldes' Hunger a little bit more than Metadata, which I loved when I watched it the previous week. I'm going to need to track down the rest of his films. 

Les Raquetteurs, dir. Michel Brault & Gilles Groulx, 1958, Canada

One filmmaking scene that I'm extremely interested in is Quebecois cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. The NFB has produced plenty of films by amazing filmmakers like Michel Brault, Gilles Groulx, Gilles Carle, Claude Jutra and others, though many of these films sadly don't have English subtitles. Neither are they indexed in the English version of the NFB Film Guide. I don't really understand the motivation of not making all films accessible in both languages for the Canadian population, and indeed making Quebecois films (not just those on NFB, but it's the same case for films by other producers in this time period as well) accessible to the English-speaking world. It's especially frustrating because many of these films are exciting, creative masterpieces that are going unseen or underseen. 

Labyrinth, dir. Colin Low, Roman Kroitor & Hugh O'Connell, 1967, five-screen 35mm projection

There are also a few films relating to Expo 67, the World's Fair held in Montreal in that year. Cinema (and media in general) played a huge part in that expo, the theme of which was "Man and His World". William Brind's Impressions of Expo 67 is a sort of introduction to the fair and is visually stunning especially in the 1080p encode on the NFB website. In the Labyrinth is a composite version of the five-35mm projection Labyrinth which must have been stunning to view. Kaj Pindal's The City was shown during Expo 70 in Osaka and I like how sound is perhaps more important than image in this short film.