The human eye, a well-known motif of psychedelic culture, is multiplied and intensified in Tanaami Keiichi’s cinematic trip 4 Eyes. Drawing from his experiences designing discotheques, Tanaami presents two prints of the same film in double-projection with a time delay to suggest the mind slipping out of consciousness.
Category: Short
With fast changing visuals and moods, an artist presents his family’s twentieth-century story. Although Stalin’s sour image is in the background, a boy’s childhood is a dreamlike world of colors and a butterfly. War interrupts youth and romance. Hitler, concentration camps, and conflagration finally give way to a mother and child (father is missing in the war), birds, beauty and more butterflies. The child grows. Pop culture arrives from America, but the grim shadow of Stalinism remains. The artist leaves to study in the West. Art, animation, sex, and love nourish him. He earns a diploma!
Inspired by Islamic architecture, the abstract linear forms in this experimental computer-animation film were colored and edited using an optical printer. The shapes bloom and flow in time with music by Manoochehr Sadeghi.
1941 was Francis Lee’s first film; CH’AN his last. In between, he became an expert Sumi-e watercolorist and here he combines eloquent ink paintings with masterful animation methods. This film moves through mysterious shapes, takes the viewer on an explosive meditative journey across the imaginary landscapes of his creations.
Presaging details and intent of the Charles Manson’s cult and actions was not meant to be one of this film’s greater attributes. It was, however, filmed uncannily months before the facts were known. The resemblance is oblique. The film: the mysticism of a “calling,” a journey to be made, a vision in mid-desert to behold and oneness with it all. Filmed in Death Valley.
A documentary about the U.S. judicial system, explaining the types of cases tried in the lower court, showing the typical minor offenders and examining the inadequate jailing facilities.
James Ivory’s second documentary, The Sword and The Flute, also dealing with schools of art, grew out of his experience in making Venice: Theme and Variations. Only here, instead of photographing works by the Italian masters, he has used superb examples of Indian miniature paintings. Ivory’s intelligent script, narrated with feeling by Saeed Jaffrey, and accompanied by the music of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, traces the history of Indian miniature painting after the Moghul invasion as it develops into two principal schools, the Moghul (Muslim) and the Rajput (Hindu).