George Maciunas was the founder of the 'anti-art, pro-chance' Fluxus Movement, and Artype is a simple but mesmeric short film from 1966, one of many made by him and his associates as an accompaniment to the numerous parties, shows, happenings and freakouts organised, attended and no doubt thoroughly enjoyed by the cream of the 1960s American Avant Garde.
Ground breaking computer generated graphics from one of the pioneers, cool (and cool looking) Lillian Schwartz (1927-2024).
Fear No Evil, d. Frank LaLoggia (1981)
An atmospheric, slightly hysterical movie teling the hitherto untold tale of the son of the Devil's troubled teenaged years in in the suburban hell of Rochester, New York, Fear No Evil has a great punk / new wave soundtrack, an often unwholesome blend of sex and violence, and a genuinely exciting, partially animated climax in which Lucifer Jr. is destroyed by the coruscating, cleansing light of a processional cross to semi-psychedelic and eye rubbing effect.
Storm de Hirsch (1912-2000) could have been content simply with having one of the greatest names of all time, but she was also a groundbreaking film maker. The screenshots here are from Peyote Queen, the second part of a trilogy called The Color Of Ritual, The Color Of Thought in which she scratches, etches and paints directly onto 16mm film and then adds a kitchen sink load of optical effects to create something wild and weird and psychedelic that reflects her early experience as an abstract-expressionist painter.
As with all the best experimental films, it takes a while to twig what's going on with Pat O'Neil's 1967 short film 7362. As the images drift, subdivide and transform like the hot wax blobs in a lava lamp, however, you'll find that it doesn't really matter what you 'get', only what you see and feel.
I'm all for forging ahead with things, but even I have to admit that something has been lost in the press button digital age in terms of experimentation. Analogue was tricky, cumbersome and time-consuming - but it was certainly fun, and it could make even a bunch of old shapes and colours feel new.
A brief (final) press of the Return button for Ghost In The Machine. Yes, that's Karen Allen.
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.
