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.
Category: Experimental
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.
Without dialogue, but with a lot of music, the film tells the story of four young women who escape from their indifferent parents, lewd teachers, sinister policemen and numerous criminals to form a commune based on the principle: “solidarity between women is powerful” in an abandoned house.
Black and white shots of a carnival segue into a psychedelic reverie as a pair of disembodied hands prepare and consume a fresh persimmon. Soundtracked by T. Rex, and featuring repurposed footage from Dumbo, Last of the Persimmons is a layered and playful homage to the simple pleasures in life.
A first film made almost single-handedly on a tiny budget, this is an admirably ambitious stab at the documentary-essay form familiar from films like Chris Marker’s Sunless. A brazenly personal response to Calcutta, it attempts to delve beyond the facile notions the West entertains about the city (‘an example of wretched over-population’), and combines vivid visuals with a narration that plunges fearlessly into economics, politics, religion, sociology and philosophy. Adverts, movie clips, comic strips, stills of the director’s mother, footage of religious ritual and street life merge into a complex web of ideas that are neither hackneyed nor obvious. A tantalising effort.
Bette Gordon explores the cinematic representation of women in this feminist experimental work, which, in the words of the filmmaker, centers on “women’s inability to place and define themselves in language and politics, the location of radical struggle.”