Piotr Dumala’s Artful Animations of Literary Works by Kafka & Dostoevsky

in Animation, Film, Literature | May 27th, 2013

There’s a cer­tain irony to Pol­ish ani­ma­tor Piotr Dumala’s inno­v­a­tive style, a stop-motion tech­nique in which he scratch­es an image into paint­ed plas­ter, then paints it over again imme­di­ate­ly and scratch­es the next. Called “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion,” Dumala devised the method while study­ing art con­ser­va­tion at the War­saw Acad­e­my of Fine Arts.

Trained as a sculp­tor as well as an ani­ma­tor, Dumala’s award-win­ning films present strik­ing­ly expres­sion­is­tic tex­tures emerg­ing from pitch black and reced­ing again. The 1991 film Kaf­ka (top) begins with the reclu­sive writer shroud­ed in dark­ness and iso­la­tion. He coughs once, and we are trans­port­ed to Prague, 1883. Each frame of Kaf­ka resem­bles a wood­cut, and the sound design is as spare as the extreme­ly high-con­trast ani­ma­tion.

In Sciany (Walls), an ear­li­er short film from 1988, Dumala uses light and shad­ow, and even more min­i­mal music and sound effects to cre­ate a haunt­ing, sur­re­al­is­tic piece that con­jures the atmos­phere of an inter­ro­ga­tion room or soli­tary con­fine­ment cell. Like the strange, emp­ty cityscapes of Gior­gio de Chiri­co, Dumala’s art unset­tles, with its skewed per­spec­tives, shad­owy, mys­te­ri­ous fig­ures, and unex­pect­ed shifts in tone and scale.


Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Dumala’s idio­syn­crat­ic half-hour Dos­to­evsky adap­ta­tion (which we’ve fea­tured pre­vi­ous­ly), uses “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion” to sim­i­lar effect as in Kaf­ka and Walls, cre­at­ing shad­owy, min­i­mal­ist set pieces that emerge slow­ly from dark­ness and return to it. But this time, Dumala incor­po­rates color—greens, reds, and browns—and the images are much more detailed, almost painter­ly.

Strip­ping the Russ­ian mas­ter­work down to just two scenes—the mur­der and Raskolnikov’s meet­ing of Sonia—Dumala inter­prets the nov­el­’s themes with the light-and-shad­ow inten­si­ty with which he ren­ders all of his artis­tic visions, say­ing, “This is about love and how obses­sion can destroy love. In our life we are under two oppo­site influ­ences to be good or bad and to love or hate.” In Dumala’s almost claus­troph­ic worlds, the lines between light and dark­ness are stark, even if they’re also ever shift­ing and ephemer­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

John Tur­tur­ro Reads Ita­lo Calvino’s Ani­mat­ed Fairy Tale

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tion of Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Picasso Create Entire Paintings in Magnificent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

in Art, Film | May 20th, 2013

How did Pablo Picas­so do it? Art his­to­ri­ans have spent much time and many words answer­ing that ques­tion, but in the video above, you can watch the painter in the act of cre­ation — or, rather, you can watch a series of his paint­ings as they come into being, evolv­ing from spare but evoca­tive col­lec­tions of mark­er strokes into com­plete images, alive with col­or. We see Picas­so’s visu­al ideas emerge, and then we see him refine and revise them, some­times toward a sur­pris­ing result. All of this hap­pens in under two min­utes, since film­mak­er Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot shot the artist work­ing with time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy, com­press­ing each cre­ative process into mere sec­onds.

This par­tic­u­lar sequence became the trail­er of Clouzot’s 1956 doc­u­men­tary The Mys­tery of Picas­so. The paint­ings in it, we read at the end, “can­not be seen any­where else. They were destroyed upon com­ple­tion of the film.” Though word on the street has it that one or two of them may actu­al­ly sur­vive some­where today, the idea of Picas­so paint­ings exist­ing only on film does cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion, and it moved the French gov­ern­ment to offi­cial­ly declare The Mys­tery of Picas­so a nation­al trea­sure. Picas­so had, of course, paint­ed on film before, as you might recall from see­ing us fea­ture Paul Hae­saerts’ 1950 Vis­ite à Picas­so.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Duke Ellington’s Symphony in Black, Starring a 19-Year-old Billie Holiday in Her First Filmed Performance

in Film, Music | May 18th, 2013

In Sep­tem­ber of 1935 Para­mount Pic­tures released a nine-minute movie remark­able in sev­er­al ways. Sym­pho­ny in Black: A Rhap­sody of Negro Life is one of the ear­li­est cin­e­mat­ic explo­rations of African-Amer­i­can cul­ture for a mass audi­ence. It fea­tures Duke Elling­ton and his orches­tra per­form­ing his first extend­ed com­po­si­tion. And per­haps most notably, it stars Bil­lie Hol­i­day in her first filmed per­for­mance.

The one-reel movie, direct­ed by Fred Waller, tells the sto­ry of Elling­ton’s “A Rhap­sody of Negro Life,” using pic­tures to con­vey the images run­ning through the musi­cian’s mind as he com­posed and per­formed the piece. Elling­ton’s “Rhap­sody” has four parts: “The Labor­ers,” “A Tri­an­gle,” “A Hymn of Sor­row” and “Harlem Rhythm.” Hol­i­day appears as a jilt­ed and abused lover in “A Tri­an­gle.”

Hol­i­day’s only pre­vi­ous screen appear­ance was as an uncred­it­ed extra in a night­club scene in the 1933 Paul Robe­son film, The Emper­or Jones. Sym­pho­ny in Black was pro­duced over a ten-month peri­od. Hol­i­day was only 19 when her scenes were shot. She sings Elling­ton’s “Sad­dest Tale,” a song care­ful­ly select­ed by the com­pos­er to fit the young singer’s style. “Sad­dest tale on land or sea,” begin the lyrics, “Was when my man walked out on me.” In the book Bil­lie Hol­i­day: A Biog­ra­phy, author Meg Greene calls the per­for­mance “mes­mer­iz­ing”:

Sym­pho­ny in Black marked an impor­tant mile­stone in the devel­op­ment of Bil­lie Hol­i­day, the woman and the singer. Elling­ton’s deft han­dling enabled Bil­lie to dis­tin­guish her­self from oth­er torch singers. She did not wear her emo­tions on her sleeve; instead, she revealed her­self grad­u­al­ly as the song unfold­ed. Hers was a care­ful­ly craft­ed and sophis­ti­cat­ed per­for­mance, espe­cial­ly for a woman only 19 years old. This care­ful­ly woven tapes­try of life and music was the ori­gin of the per­sona that audi­ences came to iden­ti­fy with Bil­lie. Oth­er singers such as Frank Sina­tra and Judy Gar­land may have more suc­cess­ful­ly estab­lished and cul­ti­vat­ed an image, but Bil­lie Hol­i­day did it first.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bil­lie Hol­i­day Sings ‘Strange Fruit’

Bil­lie Holiday–The Life and Artistry of Lady Day: The Com­plete Film

Duke Elling­ton Plays for Joan Miró in the South of France, 1966: Bassist John Lamb Looks Back on the Day

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Watch 5 Filmmakers Recall Their Most Cringeworthy Moments at the Movies with Mom & Dad

in Comedy, Film, Life | May 17th, 2013

In sixth grade, my friend Amy Osborn’s par­ents took us to a screen­ing of Annie Hall. The bed­room scenes with Car­ol Kane, Janet Mar­golin and Diane Keaton were chaste by today’s stan­dards. The repar­tee was so beyond my frame of ref­er­ence, it caused but lit­tle dis­com­fort. What did me in was the two-line exchange between a car­toon Woody Allen and Snow White’s Wicked Queen con­cern­ing her peri­od (or lack there­of). Are You There God? It’s Me, Mar­garet was our sacred text, but its most sen­sa­tion­al sub­ject matter—menstruation—was deeply taboo out­side of my 1970’s Indi­ana tribe. I could have died, know­ing Mr. Osborn was sit­ting right there. The one con­so­la­tion was that my own par­ents weren’t.

These awk­ward encoun­ters can be defin­ing, which explains why the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val sought to fer­ret them out as part of its One Ques­tion series. It’s impres­sive that the four direc­tors and one pro­duc­er fea­tured above decid­ed to pur­sue careers in film after inad­ver­tent­ly shar­ing with their par­ents such ten­der moments as a mas­tur­bat­ing Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man in Todd Solondz’s sem­i­nal (par­don the pun) Hap­pi­ness or the relent­less deflo­ration scene at the top of Lar­ry Clark’s Kids.

Per­haps you can relate. If so, please spill the gory details below. Pro­vid­ed you’re strong enough to revis­it the trau­ma, what was your most cringe-induc­ing moment at the movies with your mom or dad, or—let’s not be ageist here—your kids?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Dustin Hoff­man Talks Sex from the Com­fort of His Own Bed (1968)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day grows less ashamed with every pass­ing year. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Photographer Revisits Abandoned Movie Sets for Star Wars and Other Classic Films in North Africa

in Film, Photography | May 17th, 2013

Tunisia

Mak­ing a movie? Need to shoot some large-scale desert scenes? You might con­sid­er tak­ing your pro­duc­tion to North Africa, where you’ll find not only a great many acres of sand, but will fol­low in the foot­steps of some of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s high­est-pro­file film­mak­ers. Just above, you see a pic­ture of one of the many Star Wars sets still stand­ing in Tozeur, Tunisia, 36 years after the shoot. New York pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rä di Mar­ti­no has tak­en it upon her­self to deter­mine the loca­tions and col­lect images of these cin­e­mat­ic ruins in the projects “No More Stars” and “Every World’s a Stage.” Giv­en the sur­pris­ing­ly sound con­di­tion of some of these sets — that dry air must have some­thing to do with it — I fore­see an entre­pre­neur­ial oppor­tu­ni­ty in the vein of all those New Zealand Lord of the Rings fan tours.

Even if Star Wars does­n’t get you excit­ed enough to book a trip to Tunisia, a vis­it to Moroc­co may still inter­est you. Di Mar­ti­no’s short Petite his­toire des plateaux aban­don­nès (Short His­to­ry of Aban­doned Sets) seeks out more such long-silent fake towns, fortress­es, and gas sta­tions around Ouarza­zate, orig­i­nal­ly used for every­thing from cheap hor­ror movies to Lawrence of Ara­bia. There, a group of kids recites, dead­pan, scenes from the var­i­ous pro­duc­tions that swung through town well before they were born. These sur­viv­ing chunks of arti­fice, meant only for the cam­era, have found the cam­era again — or, rather, the cam­era has found them — with results that now look more inter­est­ing than many of the major films that com­mis­sioned them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of The Empire Strikes Back Show­cased on Long-Lost Dutch TV Doc­u­men­tary

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Poetry of Bruce Lee: Discover the Artistic Life of the Martial Arts Icon

in Film, Poetry, Sports, Television | May 14th, 2013

In the final months of his short life, Bruce Lee wrote a per­son­al essay, “In My Own Process” where he said, “Basi­cal­ly, I have always been a mar­tial artist by choice and actor by pro­fes­sion. But, above all, I am hop­ing to actu­al­ize myself to be an artist of life along the way.” If you’re famil­iar with Bruce Lee, you know that he stud­ied phi­los­o­phy at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, and even when he audi­tioned for The Green Hor­net in 1964 (and showed off his amaz­ing kung fu moves), he took pains to explain the phi­los­o­phy under­ly­ing the mar­tial arts.

Lee was­n’t just a philoso­pher. He was also a poet and a trans­la­tor of poet­ry. In the book, Bruce Lee: Artist of Life, John Lit­tle has pub­lished 21 orig­i­nal poems found with­in Lee’s per­son­al archive. The poems, Lit­tle writes, “are, by Amer­i­can stan­dards, rather dark — reflect­ing the deep­er, less exposed recess­es of the human psy­che… Many seem to express a return­ing sen­ti­ment of the fleet­ing nature of life, love and the pas­sion of human long­ing.” Above, you can see Shan­non Lee, the daugh­ter of Bruce Lee, read a poem pub­lished in Lit­tle’s col­lec­tion. It’s called “Boat­ing on Lake Wash­ing­ton.” Imme­di­ate­ly below, she reads “IF” by Rud­yard Kipling, a poem her father loved so much that he had it engraved on a plaque and mount­ed on the wall in his home.

Final­ly, we leave you with Lee’s trans­la­tion of anoth­er favorite poem, “The Frost” by Tzu Yeh. The video fea­tures pieces of his hand­writ­ten trans­la­tion.

http://youtu.be/PAektkXMxeg

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Lee: The Lost TV Inter­view

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Star­ring Role (1950)

Bruce Lee Plays Ping Pong with Nunchucks

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Freiheit, George Lucas’ Short Student Film About a Fatal Run from Communism (1966)

in Film | May 10th, 2013

Here we have an ear­ly short film by Star Wars mas­ter­mind George Lucas that con­tains no invent­ed worlds, elab­o­rate spe­cial effects, or con­scious myth­mak­ing. But Frei­heit, the third film Lucas made while a film-school stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and the first with a nar­ra­tive, has the kind of impact that con­vinces you its fledg­ling cre­ator just might have an inter­est­ing pic­ture or two in him. Titled with the Ger­man word for “free­dom,” the short uses Sovi­et-era Ger­many as a set­ting and free­dom as its dri­ving con­cept, fol­low­ing a young pro­tag­o­nist trapped on the wrong side of the Berlin bor­der who attempts a flight from his restric­tive soci­ety but meets a grim end.

Even those of you who don’t respect what we now think of as George Lucas’ brand of moviemak­ing may find much of inter­est in Frei­heit’s three-minute run­time. From the title card read­ing “a film by LUCAS” onward, you know you’re in for more of an “art” film than you may have expect­ed. Lucas com­bines still with mov­ing images and dynam­i­cal­ly varies the speed of the lat­ter to build as much visu­al inter­est as pos­si­ble in a short time (and on an undoubt­ed­ly near-nonex­is­tent bud­get). He cre­ates an urgent mood quick­ly by using both music and abstract sound, ulti­mate­ly intro­duc­ing a col­lec­tion of spo­ken words about free­dom itself. Lucas would clear­ly remain fas­ci­nat­ed, even while mak­ing block­buster space operas, by the nature of oppres­sive pow­er struc­tures, but this lit­tle project reveals his aes­thet­ic road not tak­en.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

David Lynch’s Ear­ly Short Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Rare 1952 Film: William Faulkner on His Native Soil in Oxford, Mississippi

in Film, Literature | May 9th, 2013

Ear­ly in his life, William Faulkn­er had an epiphany: “I dis­cov­ered that my own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil was worth writ­ing about, and that I would nev­er live long enough to exhaust it.” And so, as he told The Paris Review in 1956, “by sub­li­mat­ing the actu­al into the apoc­ryphal” Faulkn­er was able to take his home­town of Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side and use it to cre­ate his own imag­i­nary cos­mos. He called it Yok­na­p­ataw­pha Coun­ty.

In Novem­ber of 1952, the nor­mal­ly reclu­sive Faulkn­er allowed a film crew into his seclud­ed world at Oxford to make a short doc­u­men­tary about his life. The film, shown here in five pieces, was fund­ed by the Ford Foun­da­tion and broad­cast on Decem­ber 28, 1952 on the CBS tele­vi­sion pro­gram Omnibus. The script­ed film re-enacts events from Novem­ber 1950, when Faulkn­er received the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, through the spring of 1951, when he spoke at his daugh­ter Jil­l’s high school grad­u­a­tion.

There are scenes of Faulkn­er at Rowan Oak, his ante­bel­lum house on the edge of Oxford, and at Green­field Farm, 17 miles away, where he is shown dri­ving a trac­tor and talk­ing with work­ers. Faulkn­er is also shown briefly with his wife, Estelle, and with sev­er­al promi­nent Oxford res­i­dents, includ­ing drug­gist Mac Reed, Oxford Eagle edi­tor Phil Mullen, who col­lab­o­rat­ed  with the film­mak­ers on the script, and lawyer Phil Stone, who was an ear­ly lit­er­ary men­tor and cham­pi­on of Faulkn­er. Accord­ing to Joseph Blot­ner in his biog­ra­phy Faulkn­er, the famous writer put aside his usu­al can­tan­ker­ous­ness when the film­mak­ers arrived in Oxford:

To the plea­sure of direc­tor Howard T. Mag­wood and his ten-man crew, Faulkn­er showed him­self to be a con­sid­er­ate host and an inter­est­ed actor. He even offered Mullen some advice on read­ing his lines. He was at ease when he appeared with Mac Reed, but in a scene with Phil Stone he seemed stiff and dis­tant.

The uneasi­ness between Faulkn­er and Stone may have had some­thing to do with Stone’s feel­ing (as Mullen report­ed­ly said lat­er) that Faulkn­er had come down with a bad case of “Nobelitis in the Head.” Actu­al­ly the entire film is stiff and unre­al­is­tic. It’s a bit of a shock to see Faulkn­er, a mas­ter of the nar­ra­tive form, going through the motions as a bad actor in a hor­ri­bly writ­ten sto­ry about his own life. But any lit­er­ary fan should be fas­ci­nat­ed by this rare glimpse of the mas­ter at home on his own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil.

 

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Drink­ing with William Faulkn­er

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

William Faulkn­er Explains Why Writ­ing is Best Left to Scoundrels

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