The Brothers Quay taught a class entitled ANIMATED FILM wherein we viewed a number of films, primarily from former soviet states.
They're not proud of it, but they did it: they made a few commercials for Monsanto's Roundup Weed Killer. We watched them, they were good.
They also made a commercial for Badoit, here.
They made a commercial for Murphy's beer as well, but I can't find a link.
We watched Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood:
We viewed Yuri Norstein's The Tale of Tales:
Why is it that dead-air is not allowed?
Is pathos a flattening-out whereas sadness has layers?
We watched their collaboration with Ralf Ralf, The Summit
not unlike Sigur Ros' ( ):
NOTE: the Brothers Quay had no part in the making of the above video.
The Brothers seek to split the text apart so as to allow movement through the image and not to be overwhelmed by the text, and sometimes to suspend it.
We viewed their Piano Tuner of Earthquakes:
which they say is an homage to Adolfo Bioy Casares' The Invention of Morel
They said of this, "We have a lot of reverence for the texts we use and we wonder if maybe as a secret revenge we hit the images hard, we explode the images."
We then watched Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge:
Following this with Borowczyk's adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's Rosalie:
Then we watched The Hedgehog and the Fog Yuri Norstein & Francheska Yarbusova:
[END OF CLASS]
Showing posts with label Brothers Quay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brothers Quay. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The Brothers Quay, Evening Lecture
The Brothers were introduced by Siegfried Zielinski
We viewed sections of
Institute Benjamenta
Eurydice She, so Beloved (alludes to Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus):
Streets of Crocodiles:
Duet—Variations for the Convalescence of 'A'
and In Absentia (a collaboration with Karlheinz Stockhausen, this was based on Robert Walser's The Pencil Fields)
Andre Habib has an excellent interview with the Brothers that we might want to enjoy, here.
We viewed sections of
Institute Benjamenta
Eurydice She, so Beloved (alludes to Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus):
Streets of Crocodiles:
Duet—Variations for the Convalescence of 'A'
and In Absentia (a collaboration with Karlheinz Stockhausen, this was based on Robert Walser's The Pencil Fields)
Andre Habib has an excellent interview with the Brothers that we might want to enjoy, here.
The Brothers Quay, Day 2
The Brothers Quay taught a class entitled ANIMATED FILM wherein we viewed a number of films, primarily from former soviet states.
"The puppet is not dead, it's just still."
(This conversation reminds me of Graham Parkes' work on rock gardens. But it also reminds me of that William James essay What Makes a Life Significant? where he asks if it is not we who are the cold, dead, clods for not seeing.)
"Can the object hold that imagination, the stimmel which leads us to another plane? When we choose the elements... we're drawn to the organic... you realize there is an explosion of life, we're abducting the organic - we choose a palette like a painter."
We are suggested to look at Kleist's On a Marionette Theatre, should a marionette have human qualities? Also, The Uncanny Valley is mentioned, thus we must review Freud's The Uncanny as well as Jentsch's The Psychology of the Uncanny and of course Hoffmann's The Sandman.
We then viewed Jan Svenkmayer's A Game with Stones:
Your eyes aren't as fast as the stone. Stones can kiss as softly as people.
We then viewed Svankmayer's Historia Naturae:
We then began watching some films from Walerian Borowczyk,
Les Jeux des Anges (1/2):
(2/2):
and then Renaissance:
These films show just how significant the soundrtack is: the more ambiguous the image, the more present the soundtrack must be.
We then began viewing a section of their Institute Benjamenta (oddly enough, this scene is available at youtube):
In this scene they were hoping for a musicalization of space.
We then watched their adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, This Unnameable Little Broom:
To create a limitless space, sound and camera angles were used; but it was also limiting
Putting Gilgamesh on a tricycle or Enkidu flying were in part chosen because puppets fall down.
We watched Borowczyk's Une Collection Particulaire; and that was one of the most memorable experiences I had at EGS.
We followed that with the chase scene from Buster Keaton's Seven Chances:
We then watched Alexander Alexieff and Claire Parker's gorgeous Le Nez:
(1/2)
(2/2)
These are also the folks that created the opening sequence for Orson Welles' The Trial
How do they do it?
We then watched the last scene of Fred Astaire's The Band Wagon:
We also viewed some of Astaire and Cyd Charisse in Silk Stockings (here is the trailer):
[END OF CLASS]
"The puppet is not dead, it's just still."
(This conversation reminds me of Graham Parkes' work on rock gardens. But it also reminds me of that William James essay What Makes a Life Significant? where he asks if it is not we who are the cold, dead, clods for not seeing.)
"Can the object hold that imagination, the stimmel which leads us to another plane? When we choose the elements... we're drawn to the organic... you realize there is an explosion of life, we're abducting the organic - we choose a palette like a painter."
We are suggested to look at Kleist's On a Marionette Theatre, should a marionette have human qualities? Also, The Uncanny Valley is mentioned, thus we must review Freud's The Uncanny as well as Jentsch's The Psychology of the Uncanny and of course Hoffmann's The Sandman.
We then viewed Jan Svenkmayer's A Game with Stones:
Your eyes aren't as fast as the stone. Stones can kiss as softly as people.
We then viewed Svankmayer's Historia Naturae:
We then began watching some films from Walerian Borowczyk,
Les Jeux des Anges (1/2):
(2/2):
and then Renaissance:
These films show just how significant the soundrtack is: the more ambiguous the image, the more present the soundtrack must be.
We then began viewing a section of their Institute Benjamenta (oddly enough, this scene is available at youtube):
In this scene they were hoping for a musicalization of space.
We then watched their adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, This Unnameable Little Broom:
To create a limitless space, sound and camera angles were used; but it was also limiting
Putting Gilgamesh on a tricycle or Enkidu flying were in part chosen because puppets fall down.
We watched Borowczyk's Une Collection Particulaire; and that was one of the most memorable experiences I had at EGS.
We followed that with the chase scene from Buster Keaton's Seven Chances:
We then watched Alexander Alexieff and Claire Parker's gorgeous Le Nez:
(1/2)
(2/2)
These are also the folks that created the opening sequence for Orson Welles' The Trial
How do they do it?
We then watched the last scene of Fred Astaire's The Band Wagon:
We also viewed some of Astaire and Cyd Charisse in Silk Stockings (here is the trailer):
[END OF CLASS]
The Brothers Quay Day 1
The Brothers Quay taught a class entitled ANIMATED FILM wherein we viewed a number of films, primarily from former soviet states.
The chance encounter, from Andre Breton's statement, "Beauty as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table," this chance encounter is really central to their work. They love scavenging at local flea markets and are consistently struck by the manner in which objects are arranged; perhaps unconsciously so by the guy running the stall.
Working with puppets, like dance, is a matter of reading texts without vomiting-up dialogue.
We then watched a documentary about their film De Artificiali Perspectiva (this link will show it to you) which discusses anamorphosis. There was some discussion about Holbein's The Ambassadors, which utilizes anamorphosis with great success.
(Not from class, but I find it relevant to introduce here: Holbein's The Body of Christ in the Tomb is also a significant painting, particularly in trying to understand the existential dilemma that has accompanied Modernity. Dostoevsky features this painting prominently in his novel The Idiot. It is said that Dostoevsky was so fascinated by the painting that his wife had to pull him away from it for fear it might induce an epileptic fit in him. The painting seems to illustrate quite well the nonconvergence of metaphysics and our lived experience: there is Christ, simply, stupidly, dead - no suggestion of resurrection whatsoever.)
We then followed-up their film with Medvedkin's Happiness. We then viewed Chris Marker's The Last Bolshevik, a documetary about Medvedkin and the bizarro history that for three generations of Russian filmmakers was rediscovered again and again.
"The surreal cannot be bought off the shelf; surrealism sought to enrich reality, to expand our reality to something wondrous."
The chance encounter, from Andre Breton's statement, "Beauty as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table," this chance encounter is really central to their work. They love scavenging at local flea markets and are consistently struck by the manner in which objects are arranged; perhaps unconsciously so by the guy running the stall.
Working with puppets, like dance, is a matter of reading texts without vomiting-up dialogue.
We then watched a documentary about their film De Artificiali Perspectiva (this link will show it to you) which discusses anamorphosis. There was some discussion about Holbein's The Ambassadors, which utilizes anamorphosis with great success.
(Not from class, but I find it relevant to introduce here: Holbein's The Body of Christ in the Tomb is also a significant painting, particularly in trying to understand the existential dilemma that has accompanied Modernity. Dostoevsky features this painting prominently in his novel The Idiot. It is said that Dostoevsky was so fascinated by the painting that his wife had to pull him away from it for fear it might induce an epileptic fit in him. The painting seems to illustrate quite well the nonconvergence of metaphysics and our lived experience: there is Christ, simply, stupidly, dead - no suggestion of resurrection whatsoever.)
We then followed-up their film with Medvedkin's Happiness. We then viewed Chris Marker's The Last Bolshevik, a documetary about Medvedkin and the bizarro history that for three generations of Russian filmmakers was rediscovered again and again.
"The surreal cannot be bought off the shelf; surrealism sought to enrich reality, to expand our reality to something wondrous."
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