YOU'RE FADING IN AND OUT IV

Threshold Of The Void, d. Jean-Francois Davy (1972)

Young artist Wanda Leibovitz (Dominique Erlanger) travels from Strasbourg to Paris to escape an unhappy love affair, and moves into a large but antiquated room in an old apartment. Within the room is a locked door, and beyond the door is The Void - a formless, soundless, limitless black space which she is initially wary of, but eventually becomes addicted to. She finds that she paints better when working in the hallucinatory darkness of The Void, and although she becomes successful, things begin to fray within her. 

All Voids are inherently sinister, even the metaphorical ones, and they often want things: things to fill them, things that will stave off heartache and loneliness and existential dread, something to counter the depthless darkness. And this Void? This Void wants Wanda.

YOU'RE FADING IN AND OUT III

Julie Christie flits between dimensional barriers in the underrated Memoirs Of A Survivor, a 1981 film based on Doris Lessing's dystopian sci fi novel.

GLENN FALKENSTEIN

Glenn Falkenstein (1932-2010) was an American educator, a speech pathologist, a magician, and a mentalist. Here, in a clip from the documentary Age Of The Psychics, he covers his eyes with eight pieces of two inch adhesive tape which help hold in place two half dollar coins pressed over his closed eyes. The dark visor completes the sensory deprivation. 

Glenn doesn't need anything as basic as eyes to pick up on the vibrations of the audience, of course, and he's able to provide names, birth dates and even social security numbers astonishingly quickly and at will. I don't know how he does it, and neither do the people whose auras he's reading, so I'm going to stick my neck out and say that it's magic.

COSMIC MOTION

Disintegration Line 2 (d. Lawrence Janiak, 1970)

The constantly shifting, writhing shapes and colours shown here are the result of taking unprocessed strips of film and immersing them in tanks of very cold water before printing. The shock causes distress, which agitates the molecules to create abstract art, a familiar route to creation.

Director Janiak said: 'The abstract animation field textures subtly depict the infinitesimal nuclei of energy...a moving field of aggregates of atoms and cosmic motion'. Seems reasonable. 

ANNOUNCEMENT / PRONOUNCEMENT

 

It's been just over three years since I updated this blog. There were lots of reasons it fell into disuse, but I'm over most of them now so, if just for my own satisfaction, I'm coming back. It will be gradual, organic, gentle. I'm going to ease my way back in. You can't reheat a souffle, I know, but most leftover meat pies are okay with a quick blast in the microwave.

See you shortly.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

EGYPTOLOGY

 

Riddles Of The Sphynx, d. Laura Mulvey & Peter Wollen (1977)

Stills from this extraordinary experimental film treatise, capturing the enclosed back garden, the subsidised canteen, the smoking room, the outer office, the Arndale, BHS, a corner of the kitchenette. Perfectly observed details that sum up the artificiality and banality of life in the 1970s, particularly for the women expected to inhabit these places.

I once spoke to Laura Mulvey after a lecture. The conversation lasted approximately three minutes, which was more than enough time to know she was one of the most intelligent and interesting people I have ever met.

NOW YOU SEE IT

 

THREE SHOTS, FOUR SPOCKS

INBETWEENERS

A selection of backdrops, transitions and incidental details from Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-74).