FLICKERED

FLICKERY LIGHTS: (/ˈflɪkə/) (lʌɪts/) (noun) Unusual animation, things that move, experimental puppetry, stop motion, cinematographs.

Len Lye – “A COlour Box” (1932″

Video | | Paul Greer

“The first of Lye’s ‘direct films’ to receive a public screening. Promoted by Sidney Bernstein’s Granada chain of cinemas, it eventually came to be seen “by a larger public than any experimental film before it, and most since” (as the film historian David Curtis has pointed out). Its soundtrack is a beguine – a dance popular in France during the 1930s. A Colour Box won a Medal of Honour at the 1935 International Cinema Festival in Brussels. Having no suitable category in which to award the film, the jury simply invented a new one.”

“As its title suggests, A Colour Box was also notable for being a colour film. Lye used the process of Dufaycolor at a time when colour film was still in an experimental phase. This gave the film a novelty value when first shown. A Colour Box eventually secured quite a wide theatrical release and became popular with both general audiences and critics. Because it was colourful and dynamic, with a catchy musical score, it was more accessible than many abstract films of the period.”

– screenonline

see also

Stan Brakhage – “Cat’s Cradle” (1959)

Video | | Paul Greer

“Paul Arthur, in his essay for The Criterion Collection, wrote that Cat’s Cradle “does not entirely suppress our recourse to naming but rather floods our typical eye-brain loop with stimuli for which attached language cues are either less than automatic or, in cases of purely sensory appeal, non-existent.” Fred Camper, in another essay for The Criterion Collection, remarked upon the mysteriousness of the four characters’ interactions, but was nevertheless “kept on edge by the very rapid intercutting… the viewer is at once encouraged to come up with his own interpretations and prevented from settling on any one idea.”

see also

George Dunning – The Tempest (unfinished) (1978)

Video | | Paul Greer

“After Damon, Dunning began to lay plans for a feature based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Dunning had been unwell throughout the production of Yellow Submarine, and poor health continued to dog him. When he died in London on 15 February 1979, The Tempest remained sadly unfinished. The collated surviving material – black-and-white pencil tests, pose sketches, a few full-colour animation sequences – hints at a bold expansion of past techniques, with figures, landscapes, even the Shakespeare text, in perpetual flux.”

see also: Ubu