JEFF KEEN, ALL TIME ART HERO

Jeff Keen (1923-2012) is one of my all time art heroes. Keen was an autodidact who never joined any part of the establishment, not even briefly and, as a result, received none of the attention and accolades due to him as one of the greatest and most original British artists of the 20th century. Posthumously, his reputation has grown, but still not enough. He is one of my biggest influences.

His films are perhaps his primary artform, and they remind you of why Edison called his early cinematic device the Kinetoscope – they are full of motion and energy, crazed, febrile things that burst onto the screen in a barrage of crashing planes, mushroom clouds, plastic soldiers, fires, floods, sexy girls, hairy men, super heroes and super villains, starring his friends and family and set to intriguing and ear popping soundtracks. The young Keen had fought in World War Two (he called it ‘the best time of my life’) and the violence and anarchy of that experience was a major and indelible influence on him.

After leaving the Army, Keen spent a single term at Art College, but was working as a gardener with Brighton Council’s Parks Department when he made his first short film in 1959. A confirmed cineaste, it suddenly occurred to him that he could make a film himself, so he borrowed an 8mm camera and set out on a fifty year career as the UK’s most innovative radical film maker.

Keen’s film work is undeniably experimental, but to me it seems like the product of a parallel universe film industry where horror, sci fi, war and soft porn are the only influences: Hollywood with the boring and talky bits taken out, a gleeful disordering of narrative that goes wherever it likes, however it likes, at 250 miles an hour: comic books, high art, popular cliché and the avant-garde, all delivered in one super fast short burst of energy, like a shot of adrenaline to the heart.

Here are some shots from his 1968 short film White Lite. I find stimulation in every single particle of Keen's work, even the bits 'in-between', where his method creates abstract art without really thinking about it, so eager is he to share his frantic vision. 

I'll get back to Jeff as and when. As I might have mentioned, I love his work.

SEE YOU AT MAO

British Sounds, d. Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Henri Roger (1970)

Jean-Luc Godard was eight years into a highly successful career when he formed the Dziga-Vertov Group, a loose affiliation of politically charged film makers who, almost certainly, spent most of their time arguing about Chairman Mao and dialectical materialism. 

Named after the influential Soviet film maker Dziga Vertov (perhaps best known for 1929's Man With A Movie Camera), the groups films are defined primarily by their Brechtian forms, Marxist ideology, and a lack of personal authorship. Their time together (1968-1971) resulted in four completed films, the most interesting of which is British Sounds, an experimental film essay that takes in car manufacturing, a naked woman reciting Marx, an upper class fascist blow-hard, a discussion between depressed trade unionists, and a bunch of dippy hippies making posters and trying to rewrite Beatles songs to include revolutionary slogans, a task that is seemingly beyond them.

Angry and uncompromisingly polemical, this film is a bit like being flicked with a wet towel for sixty minutes. It ends with a series of shots of fists punching through the Union Jack, smashing the system, once piece of thin cardboard at a time.

STRANGE MEETING

 

The early nineteen sixties were a boom period for avant garde film makers. Not only was equipment becoming more affordable and portable, the conventions (and cliches) of the avant garde were not yet fully established, making it a fertile and open period for experimentation. 

In 1963's Sretanje (Encounter) (1963), young Croatian amateur Vladimir Petek gives us a series of shots of a young woman, with the film variously scratched, punctured, drawn on, pixelated, polarised, solarised, cut in half and glued back together in post production to provide a discombobulating and visually rich breaking down of what film can - and is supposed to - do.

Thanks to Jörg for the tip off - and all the other pointers.

DANCE AWAY

 

It's 1969 and, in Canada, hipsters are starting to transform into hippies. Jean Beaudin's psychedelic study Vertige captures a select few - not necessarily freaking out, but certainly cutting a rug with various degrees of commitment.