Visual Alchemy - History

1.

'The Chelsea Girls'

"The Chelsea Girls (1966) by Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol* is what I highlight as a big inspiration, or as it was stated in the call out:
"films that greatly influenced my film career and my appreciation for the film industry".

Note: * Andy Warhol got almost all the credit for the 'films by Andy Warhol' which he produced and certainly was involved in making. This film, as well as many others, was directed by Paul Morrissey who should get at least equal credit.

Q & A with Al Razutis:

What attracted me to see this film?

"I thought I was going to a porno movie after seeing the poster. That was my intention for going, anyway.

What did I think when I saw the movie?

"After seeing this 1966 movie in a dark theater in Hollywood, with about a dozen people spread out in the audience, and me looking around at them in between looking at the film... I decided that day and that moment ""Hey, I can make films too!" and got a super-8 camera... and the rest is on my website, which keeps growing with more... explanations. Yeah, this happened in Hollywood. True Hollywood story, called growing up to make films.

What exactly did I see that perked my interest?

"I saw nothing that resembled middle-class or typical American culture, not TV, radio, or the movies, and I saw people from an 'underground' that I never knew existed. Oh yes, and it was on 'two separate screens, with side by side windows of content', something I had never seen before in a movie, in a theatre, in Hollywood. I later found out that the order of episodes shown on each screen was arbitrary, and could be picked by the projectionist in any way they wanted.

"This was a kind of freedom of expression that I was immediately taken with. This was freedom from formula, from all those imposed values that stiffled imagination. That's why I decided to make my own films."

2.

'A Trip to the Moon'

"A Trip to the Moon (1902) by Georges Melies is what I highlight as a big inspiration - #2 on this list."

"1902? That's the date, the film is searchable, watchable on YouTube or in some film history classes. I first saw this film in 1967, in its 'hand-colored print' version -- each frame was colored by hand by assistants on long tables, colored with ink painted on details of every frame. This was 1902. I saw it in 1967, a year after I saw my 'film #1', this time at a 'UNDERGROUND' film screening in San Francisco, and it blew me away...

Is this film transgressive?

"'Transgressive' means prone to transgress, in all manners of cultural expression, and includes 'piracy' of films by those interested in preserving film history and culture outside of the film archives where some of them rot in closed containers.

"The film print screened in San Francisco underground theaters was certainly a 'pirated' copy of originals stored at the French National Cinematheque. In the case of Melies and A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune), and the circulation and distribution / exhibition of 'stolen archival films' (which would not otherwise see the light of day in some dusty archive visited once a decade by 'scholars') it was transgressive to screen it. But this was out of the commercial film theatre world so most profiteers of cinema never noticed these underground screenings.

'What happened after?'

"I realized these 'ancient films' were the foundation of all this 'cinema' and 'tee vee' we had been raised on since we got so see any. I also found out these prints were from "borrowed" (stolen) materials smuggled out of the Cinematheque Francais in Paris and that the 'pirates' had distributed these films for the 'love of cinema' not for the love of money or pussy / ass as it was done in Hollywood (where I was from).

"I then collected B&W copies of all Melies films I could find, printed copies of them in black and white, distributed them right out of my own studio beginning in 1973 in Vancouver.

"I wasn't competing with 'film studies' in universities because there was none of that yet in 1973... none that I saw.

"And so, I made films about these "Origins of Cinema", also starting in 1973, with a film called "Melies Catalogue" contained within it."

"A page on these films with a link to "Melies Catalogue": film_visess.html#melies

"A very smart and insightful essay on the 're-purposing' of archival films, including my works on it, is in 2015 Moving Image titled "The Remix Age - Exhibition as Archive" by Viva Paci, and which I have posted here for download of PDF copy:

http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/writings/0-2015_Paci-proof.pdf

"My FaceBook page dedicated to my "Visual Essays" includes the Melies Catalogue and is here:"

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Visual-Essays/294559733978019

3.

'Meshes of the Afternoon'

"Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) by Maya Deren is what I highlight as a big inspiration - #3 on this list."

Al Razutis: "For a guy who grew up in Hollywood, USA on Hollywood films it's weird (to some but not to me) that my fave film 'made in Hollywood' is by a NY ex-pat of Ukrainian - Jewish origins (emigrated from Kiev to NY), who then moved to Hollywood (for a while), and would be this film.

"This is 'not a Hollywood film', nothing to do with that industry and its studios, not a reaction against it but the (created, invented) use of film to 'express film poetry' in ways unseen on the screens before.

. "This beautiful, simple, haunting and without one word of dialogue film was shot in our Hollywood Hills, made in the 1940's when everyone else was doing 'talkies' with 'music and sound effects' and 'telling stories of Greek origins', or war stories and Biblical epics -- did I forget 'film Noir? comedies? -- this film culture 'manufactured from another time' culture was tiresome to bear.

"I hated that kind of Hollywood and the TV is spawned after a while. So did many of my generation.

"When I came upon this film for the first time in 1967, also in a UNDERGROUND film screening in San Francisco, I was blown away. It was a 'new way' to 'tell stories', but it had been made in 1943 (!), and if it wasn't for the love of film and culture by some people (distributors! exhibitors! and later film curators!) works like these would have never been seen by the likes of us in the 60's or later.

"'Meshes of the Afternoon' is a film short, searchable, watchable, read about-able, and is well known. I can assure you that our generation never heard about it before the 60's, never even saw it until those underground film theaters where all these 'transgressions' of 'dominant - meaning, our parents'- culture occurred.

"Even if she made only a few films, she contributed memorable writings on film, like this on her use of 'anagrams' in film narrative (construction). Combine that with a gift for surrealism and psycho-narrative, and a sense of space gleamed from 'dance', you have quite a force in the 'experimental cinema' (her term) that survives even when many are forgotten.

"She lives on the minds and hearts of those who love cinema and poetry.

"Note * Postcard from Maya Deren to Jonas Mekas reprinted from FaceBook (with comments), and look at the year for these two film pioneers(!)."

---

External resources:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/how-maya-deren-became-the-symbol-and-champion-of-american-experimental-film

How Maya Deren Became the Symbol and Champion of American Experimental Film
'A new biography of the iconic independent filmmaker depicts a cultural force of nature who all too quickly lost her way'  By Richard Brody

"In revolutionary moments, time seems to accelerate, and changes usually marked out in decades take place in a matter of months. There’s a special, melancholy tinge to the fate of those who were themselves at the forefront of the very revolutions that left them behind. (Elvis Presley comes to mind.) That’s the story told in “Maya Deren: Choreographed for Camera,” Mark Alice Durant’s new biography of the filmmaker (published by Saint Lucy Books), and it’s thrilling and terrifying.

"It’s the tale of an artist who, in the mid-nineteen-forties, in the span of four years, by the age of thirty, remade her artistic world—drastically and definitively. Despite, or thanks to, her youth, she nearly single-handedly put experimental cinema on the American cultural map, and also became its iconic visual presence. Then, just as quickly, she fell out of that world, never to return in her too-brief lifetime. She died in 1961, in poverty and obscurity.

"She fulfilled the destiny detailed by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his 1835 story "Wakefield"p: "By stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever." A woman, even more so.

"Deren’s completed films are home movies, made mainly where she lived; that fact stands at odds with their nonrealistic pursuit of what she called 'inner realities' and 'the laws of the invisible powers.' In throwing out the bathwater of Hollywood commercialism, she also threw out the baby of narrative. "I could move directly from my imagination into film," she wrote—and so she did, with hardly a trace of her lived experience.

"By achieving worldwide recognition for films that she made on her own, with family and friends, on trivial budgets, she spurred generations of experimental filmmakers to follow in her footsteps; their films then found a home in institutions that she’d helped bring to life. As for the specific influence of Deren’s artistry, it radiated outward in many directions and inspired a wide range of avant-garde filmmakers..."

---

4.

'A Movie'

"A Movie (1958) by Bruce Conner is what I highlight as a big inspiration - #4 on this list."

Al Razutis: "I saw this 12 min. film, composed entirely of 'stock footage', found footage, clips, with no dialogue, only music, in 1967 at an underground film screening in San Francisco, and it blew me away. And it blew a lot of my generation away, the ones not standing up for Republican party but counter culture, underground film culture. It inspired those of us who were already INSPIRED TO MAKE FILMS, to make more films, this time using 'appropriation'.

"This was 'film culture' on the terms of our generation, not Hollywood, not Doris Day and Disneyland. Not 'consumers' like our parents but producers of works shared in our own theaters. What a concept, this living culture(!). Nothing 'safe' here, everything experimental.

"I call these out as "transgressive films" of the underground kind, the transgression being that Conner used 'other people's footage' without 'getting the rights' or 'buying it'; he 'appropriated' footage for creative and 'critical' purposes (not an academic paper), and he showed how meaning is constructed in film narratives by association and not necessarily blah blah blah dialog. And he got away with it.

"This film is searchable, playable, and read all about able. I submit some links here to help with the journey.

"Comments below will illustrate the depth of my interest, and what I did with it, and how it affected my films for decades

"Made in 1958... (who do you think was the audience?) seen by me & others in 1967 and called 'underground films' then... now, we're making films, we're making our own movies... influenced by all that was shown...

"A MOVIE (yeah, big titles, big music) that makes us want to make movies, more movies, including my own film AMERIKA the movie... and including my sequel on video with found footage VR A MOVIE.

"In addition to previous comments I see more influences on me and my works - the black leader pauses between shots, sequences, then sudden jolts, mood changes, all done without dialog or story telling of the common narrative kind. This was certainly a 'new narrative' in American film culture reintroduced in the 60's, closer to the Russian formalists and school of Eisenstein and montage than Hollywood and American culture, and certainly not derived from formalist 'structuralism' of the kind practiced by NYC loft artists shooting 47 minute 'zoom' films (for the gallery mindset).

"My own earliest films like 'Black Angel Flag... EAT' (1968) and videos like 'Disasters of the 30's' (1970) were particularly inspired by Conner's A Movie and its violations of film narratives, film conventions. Here's a snapshot of the description of the film with sample frames 'Black Angel Flag ... EAT"

http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/filmvideo_archives.html#blackangel

Watch the whole film 'A Movie' on Dailymotion - not available on YouTube

" A Movie - Bruce Conner - in video from Dailymotion - https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x248brc
-- " A Movie is a 1958 experimental collage film in which Bruce Conner put together snippets of found footage, taken from B-movies, newsreels, soft-core pornography, novelty short films, and other sources, to a musical score featuring Respighi's Pines of Rome."

Acknowledgments and influences

Al Razutis: "My own film 'Amerika' and my interests in assemblage art owes some to the films and art of Bruce Conner, and other collagists, whose influence over all (things) 'west-coast' spread from Underground to museums, now resurfacing again."

A revue by Amy Taubin of recent Conner film and art exhibitions is an occasion to remember the nature of this 'west' and 'east' film cultural divide (and who conquered what how).

"For Conner lived mostly in San Francisco from 1957 until his death and was for decades a heroic presence in the West Coast art and experimental-film world. That so much of the work in the exhibition is little known in New York speaks to a long East Coast/West Coast divide. It was not until the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis mounted a large retrospective in 1999 (in which Conner's work in assemblage, rather than film, was given pride of place) that Conner was understood simply as a major American artist rather than as a regional outlier. And it was probably not until 2010, two years after his death, when restorations of almost all his major films showed at New York's Film Forum, that his enormously innovative, influential, and just plain masterful moving-image work was recognized beyond the rarefied if embattled avant-garde-film world and the advertising and music-video producers who've cribbed from Conner for decades."

https://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201607&id=63005

From my post a few years ago:

"Looking for Bruce Conner? Now found in a book from MIT press. Extraordinary stuff, inspiring generations, a film-maker like Melies who got trains derailed then running in new directions. Not just the past, but what can be done in the future, like in our web styles and networked realities. Check out this paragraph contents, no canon or saint-hoods for those who love the mysteries of assemblage and obliterating genres."

Looking For Bruce Conner By Kevin Hatch

"In a career that spanned five decades, most of them spent in San Francisco, Bruce Conner (1933-2008) produced a unique body of work that refused to be contained by medium or style. Whether making found-footage films, hallucinatory ink-blot graphics, enigmatic collages, or assemblages from castoffs, Conner took up genres as quickly as he abandoned them. His movements within San Francisco's counter-cultural scenes were similarly free-wheeling; at home in beat poetry, punk music, and underground film circles, he never completely belonged to any of them. Bruce Conner belonged to Bruce Conner. Twice he announced his own death; during the last years of his life he produced a series of pseudonymous works after announcing his "retirement." In this first book-length study of Conner's enormously influential but insufficiently understood career, Kevin Hatch explores Conner's work as well as his position on the geographical, cultural, and critical margins."

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/looking-bruce-conner

5.

'OFFON'

"OFFON (1968) by Scott Bartlett is what I highlight as a big inspiration - #5 on this list."

The following is excerpted from my web page on this film OFFON:

"Roll history: Al Razutis: "I'll never forget being at a small underground film screening, done in a San Francisco loft in 1968, when a guy with curly hair (Bartlett) came in 'straight from the lab' with his 'new film' and they put it on the projector -- the film was "OFFON" by Scott Bartlett and it blew me and the audience away...

"That's right. Straight from the lab to the screen, 1968 underground 'cinema' was a wild place to be and wild things to see.

"There was none of the 'church of experimental cinema' attitude, proceedings, with podiums, tiresome Q & A after screening, then getting drunk. That came later, when films were re-named "experimental" and government grants (in Canada) paid the way to the party and then 'Gov. Gen. Awards' when the well connected couldn't walk anymore and the group portrait looked like a mortuary posing its stiffs.

"OFFON by by Scott Bartlett - 9 min. color sound 1968 - a classic early example of creating a INTERMEDIA & HYBRID finished work using film, using video, using loops and rojection materials from light shows as inspiration was OFFON by Scott Bartlett with assistance from Tom Dewitt, Manny Meyer, and Michael McNamee in 1967."

Watch OffOn on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEr9Z7Q4ZxY

From Martin Rumsby "The Virtual Avant-Garde" 2014 http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/writings/0-2014_virtual_avant.pdf

"Scott Bartlett (1943-1990), made experimental and erotic films as well as film loops for West Coast light shows. His film OffOn (1967), made up from his film loops, was the first 'electrovideographic jam.' Bartlett's romantic, West Coast cool sensibility clashed with the then prevailing New York 'structuralist' school... OffOn demolished the artificial boundaries between film and video, and set off a wave of similar works that fused video, then an emerging medium, with the filmic image."

From cinespot.com/2013/11/offon-film-changed-language-cinema/ (March 30, 2014)

"Bartlett's other films which included, Moon 1969 (1969), Serpent (1971), Medina (1972), Metanomen (1966), Lovemaking (1970) were much admired by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas." -- Wheeler Winston Dixon, 'OffOn: The Film that Changed the Language of Cinema'.

Al Razutis: "My page on synaesthetic and expanded cinema, to include my own films and 'Videographics': http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/intermedia-syn.html

Al Razutis: "The 1970 book 'Expanded Cinema' by Gene Youngblood chronicled some of the exciting works of the 60's and 70's in a lasting way. Also from my page http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/intermedia-syn.html

Al Razutis: "Just to restate the obvious: the 'underground film scene' inspired many to make their own films. That is to say it wasn't just for 'consumers' but also for 'film producers', that's how living culture (not dead on arrival shit from Hollywood) worked for our generation. Yeah, living. Yeah, living still, not dead recollections collecting dust -- take a look at media art and you'll know what I mean."

WIKIPEDIA

"OffOn is an experimental film created by Scott Bartlett made and released in 1968. It is most notable for being one of the first examples in which film and video technologies were combined. The nine-minute film combines a number of video loops which have been altered through re-photography or video colorization, and utilizes an electronic sound track to create its unique effect.

"In 2004, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

On the relationship of Scott Bartlett's OFF ON with Pat O'Neill's 7362 film, both made in 1967:

"They are alike, and a comparison is warranted. I carried OffOn's answer print to an avant garde film show at UC Berkeley in 1967, not knowing "7362" was receiving its Bay Area premier showing. It was one of those rare moments of independent creativity that start new confluences in intellectual pursuits. Of course, I knew well enough what 7362 was, because it is how we were able to produce not only OffOn but the light shows that were edited into the OffOn. Did P O'N produce light shows?" - Tom DeWitt, (contributor to OFFON film, 2004)."

UCLA Student video on 'The "Making of OffOn' by Cynthia Anne Haagens is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yASi81-qxRI

6.   7.   8.

'Three Films by Stan Brakhage'

"Window Water Baby Moving (1958),   Mothlight (1963),   Dog Star Man (1961-1964) by Stan Brakhage are what I highlight as a big inspirations - #6, #7, #8 on this list."

#6 WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING (1958) - 17 min. 24 sec.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22xk6v

(NOTE: Ignore the sound on this dailymotion link - it has been added on by some video dweebs who don't know what they are doing! doesn't belong there - this is the most complete version in low res on the web I could find.)

Al Razutis: " A 'home movie' of love and childbirth, and water, and the joy of seeing your first born, done without sound, with in camera edits, with an intimacy that few of us had ever seen before on screen. It was mind-blowing. Someone fainted in the audience, which was electrified throughout the screening and auditorium that night. Never before had we seen such an intense, personal, expressive and joyful recitation of life on film, and in a cinema."

#7 MOTHLIGHT (1963) 3min. 25 sec.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt3nDgnC7M8

Al Razutis: " A film made 'without a camera', with images created by gluing (taping) moth wings and insect parts to perforated celluloid and then printing & editing it, then projecting - showing it... and it was mind-blowing, and still is some 60 years later."

#8 DOG STAR MAN (entire) - 1 hr 14 min. 1961 - 1964
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAoTHILzheo

Al Razutis; "This film was EPIC, it was 'mythopoetic cinema' at its best, and at its most expressive, not some dumb-ass 3 hour one shot, or some lazy looped film -- it was done frame by frame, with in camera edits, overlays, like an epic poem what had to be 'sung', and sung without music or any sound, because that came from 'within'."

Additional personal reflections by Al Razutis

"I saw all three of these films on a big screen, in an auditorium in Berkeley at the UC campus at a "psychedelic underground cinema" film series run by John Schofield in 1967 or 1968 I can't exactly say. These films and their screenings changed my life, my filmmaking, my appreciation of what 'film' and what 'cinema' was, and how it could be 'made'.

" Underground, not 'experimental' cinema it was called then on the west coast.

" The auditorium was packed as it was for every showing, every program. The films were briefly introduced by Schofield. Stan Brakhage (and his parents) were in attendance. The electricity in the audience was strong, exciting. These public film screenings (in an auditorium, theater, or a loft) were always a celebration, a happening. This was not 'church' but a party which spawned many other 'parties' (screenings, filmmaking) afterwards.

" Films without any sound, as was Brakhage's method. Films made personally, like 'home movies', not in a factory, not a studio with hordes of people helping. Films created in camera, or out of camera, edited in camera or by hand with a viewer and splicer.

" Films made with home or borrowed facilities. Not who you know. Films made independently.

" Films that transformed my sense (and my generation's sense) of what film was, could be. Films that transformed my sense of 'filmmaker' and 'filmmaking', and how some intense people (yeah, Brakhage had to be intense to make these highly personal, poetic, free from cinematic norms and rules, while he lived in poverty because of it) were very influential in our underground film scene.

" And it would show in our works.

" This was about as 'far' as one could get from commercial films, 'entertainment', TV, or Hollywood impersonations (with Peter Fonda?) of our protest counter-culture which none of us paid ANY attention to.

" Fact is, there was a 'schism' between 'establishment' and 'counter culture', between right wing and left wing, between 'capitalists' and war-mongerers who were Republican who still watched Hollywood, liked Regan, and secretly liked that 'porn'... which those 'underground artists made'... that was the cultural split of those times. We hated them. They hated us. Only the Beatles sang 'all you need is love' while we listened to acid rock, Dylan, the Stones.

" Brakhage was older than us college age filmmakers (by at least ten years), and like others I've listed on this series he came from another decade. Jonas Mekas in NYC may has touted him there (In 1961, Jonas Mekas wrote that Brakhage is "one of the four or five most authentic film artists working in cinema anywhere, and perhaps the most original filmmaker in America today," - WIKI), or in the Village Voice, but this was the 'West Coast', the coast of Berkeley Barb, our versions, our free presses and we were imitating no one, didn't care if it was called 'art' or not, and certainly there were no 'film schools' then (that I heard of).

" No academia was involved in what we watched, even if UC Berkeley loaned some auditorium space, and the audience those days was both vocal and determining of who what where would be shown."

REFERENCES:

"Methaphors on Vision (Brakhage) the most influential book on experimental cinema to come out in the 60's on our west coast. From 'Metaphors on Vision' by Stan Brakhage, landmark book on my site http://www.alchemists.com/fb/brakhage-metaphors.pdf

"The works and decades of Stan Brakhage are beautifully summarized, and articulated in the essay of Marilyn Brakhage on his work and 'visual music' written in 2008 (published in VantagePoint), and recently republished by MediaNet "InFlux Magazine" Victoria BC as "The Visual Music of Stan Brakhage".

"You can download Marilyn Brakhage's essay and interview with Rick Raxlen on my site http://www.alchemists.com/fb/onstanbrakhage.pdf

BIOS AND REFERENCES FROM WIKI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Brakhage

INFLUENCES:

"See my 1970 film "AAEON", which was obviously inspired by Brakhage films, and others, at aaeon.html "

CANADA CONNECTION by Al Razutis

"The Brakhage connection to BC Canada is that shortly before his death he and Marilyn and family moved to Victoria, BC.

"You can download Marilyn Brakhage's essay and interview with Rick Raxlen on my site http://www.alchemists.com/fb/onstanbrakhage.pdf

"Films by Brakhage are now restored by the Academy Archives (Hollywood), celebrated and continue to inspire everyone to experiment in forms of 'individual perception' and indivdual techniques and vision. It was totally revolutionary for its time, and still is today."

"Youngblood's 'Expanded Cinema' book talks a lot about 'synaesthetic cinema' and synaesthesia in the arts. Downloadable from my site too in pdf: http://www.alchemists.com/fb/expanded_cinema_youngblood.pdf

"And if you're talking 'the fifties' and synaesthetic works, then Stan Brakhage is the most remarkable and outstanding, prolific, and dedicated to 'visual music' case that I and many ever saw appearing in the underground cinemas (SF, Vancouver) in the 1960's.

"The influence of Brakhage on film would continue for decades, and still continues today.

"My page on 'synaesthetic cinema' focused on the west-coast also adds to the story of the cultures of the times: intermedia-syn.html

"A good web site - page to visit is Canyon Cinema which presents 'curated' shows of Brakhage's films, which is helpful to those new to that cinema.

http://canyoncinema.com/clients/curated-programs/stan-brakhage-curated-programs/

"To say Brakhage's films and styles influenced all the future film generations including this one is to understate the case by using only one word."

GUEST COMMENTARY:

"The Summit of American Post-WWII Cultural Achievement" - by Martin Rumsby (FaceBook May, 2020)

"There was something in these moving images (of experimental films), works that painters and writers never quite achieved. In this case an honesty - a self revelation (quite different from the self revelations found in Brakhagian cinema). Then there was the special context presented by independent screenings of time, an excitement and liveliness that cannot be recreated in the classroom or on the internet. An amplified sense of communality - of outsiders sharing the same same and experience. At another level, I sometimes say that in some of his later direct films Stan Brakhage created a more 'perfect' expression of the abstract expressionist aesthetic than was ever achieved by a painter. This is because films live in time. The best a Jackson Pollock painting can do is to present a record of the 'action' that lay behind the work. In Brakhage's films the viewer enters into and can briefly actually live that moment of creation as it unfolds in time. It is experiential. And then there are works like yours Al Razutis - say AMERIKA, or Bruce Conner's A MOVIE which grapple with politics in a way which few in the other arts - say, modernist or post-modernist painting were prepared to do. The American 'avant-garde' was, unlike its European predecessors, stripped of its political function. And, say Christopher Maclaine's The End - about the impossibility of one ever being able to survive 1950s American society, or Arthur Lipsett's 21.87. The almost Zen-like stillness of Rimmer's Canadian Pacific. These were visions given to us by North American avant-garde film artists that were quite different in spirit and realisation than much of the writing and visual art of the time. I am not so sure about this next point but it seems, to me, that there was less gamesmanship (blatant and ruthless careerism) around the American avant-garde film scene, or maybe its manifestation on the west coast then amongst moving image and film artists today. A greater fraternity and maybe even a greater sense of shared purpose."

9.

'Multiplex - Holographic Stereogram - Movie'

"The Multiplex Hologram invented by Lloyd Cross is what I highlight as a big inspiration - #9 on this list."

COMMENTS by Al Razutis

Al Razutis: "Nearing the end of this series, but still in the early 1970's, we have what is 'not a typical movie', but a true motion picture which was printed 'holographically' (hence it is called 'holographic stereogram' or 'multiplex hologram' or 'integral hologram') onto a strip of holographic film with a specially designed / constructed 'holographic film printer' which rendered each 'frame' of a movie shot of a subject as very thin vertical strips to be viewed in a 'cylinder' when illuminated by light. And what I saw was a 'motion-picture 3D image floating in space!'

"I wasn't particularly drawn to making such movies, nor did I make any, but I was truly inspired to the 'idea of holographic movies' when I first saw these multiplex movies exhibited in San Francisco at Multiplex Co. and School of Holography on Shotwell Street. What I saw was simply astounding! A moving image of what I recall was a woman blowing a kiss ('The Kiss' I & II) as a small figure focused to be 'suspended in space' in the 'center of a clear cylinder', and she moved (blew a kiss!) as I went side to side along the horizontal cylinder axis.

"I had never seen anything like it! I knew at that very instant that this was one of the 'futures' of 'holographic movies', especially those for small displays (home, gallery, advertising). And indeed this Multiplex Company and the people of the SF School of Holography would engage in a series of such movies, presentation displays, and deliver this technology and its movies to the wider public across the world.

Visit a page dedicated to Multiplex movies and Multiplex holographic stereogram technology at Sharon McCormack Collection and Archives

As quoted from the McCormack Collection & Archives page:

"BACKGROUND TO MULTIPLEX: 'Multiplex Holograms' were invented by Lloyd Cross, with the assistance of Jerry Pethick, Michael Kan and others associated with the SF School of Holography. Cross 'solved' the problem of creating 'motion-picture holographic stereograms' (from motion-picture film strips) that were first viewable only in 'laser light' and subsequently improved to be viewable in 'white-light' after Cross met with Steve Benton and saw his invention (the white-light viewable 'rainbow hologram') which produced a a cheaper, more popular alternative to laser illumination. This invention, of course, follows on the footsteps of 1960's inventions in holography which hit their stride in the 1970's. When Cross joined forces with some skin-film producers to create a shooting studio, the productions took off. View the catalog below (on the page) for 'Multiplex' holograms, which became a trademark or label for this process, later renamed by Cross, McCormack & others as 'integral holography', with a nod to Gabriel Lippman's 'integral photography'."

'The Story of Multiplex' & the School of Holography by Lloyd Cross (.PDF)

Visit a page on : Multiplex Apparatus Technology & Printers

'Mark Series' holographic aerial image printers designed by Lloyd Cross, and sample hologram projection unit - display unit for McCormack Multiplex holographic stereograms ('integrals')- 360 degree motorized cylinder & walk-around view. The 3D image with horizontal parallax only 'floats' in the center of a moving cyliner which is illuminated by a white light bulb. The 3D images move in various actions and in slow motion in the automated display.

Lloyd Cross - Bio / Achievements up to 1970 (.PDF)

Further readings at 'Expanded Cinema' and Multiplex Holography - Holographic Cinema 1970's

The 'holographic stereogram' (or 'integral') combines 2D cinematography showing horizontal parallax and motion with 'holographic printing' (using Cross' invented 'printers' - Mark I to Mark V - as improved on by Sharon McCormack and Lloyd Cross lenses). This was a remarkable development in holography with a world-wide impact.Viewers could 'walk around' a movie playing in 360 degrees with an image appearing to float in a cylinder. It suggested 'holographic TV' or 'holographic movies' and were exhibited in the 1970's and continuing through the 1990's, 2000's.

Sample Views of multiplex hologram images in anaglyph 3D

Three views in time, in anaglyph 3D , of multiplex holographic stereogram "The Embrace" by Sharon McCormack - Stereo 3D photos
   

The Embrace 1 min. video clip on YouTube - in 3D

Visit: 'Curator's Room' at the Sharon McCormack Collection and Archives

Related works by Al Razutis in holographics and stereoscopic 3D:

Visit: Holographic Art by Al Razutis

Visit: Stereoscopic 3D Video Film Art by Al Razutis

TO BE CONTINUED?

REFERENCE PAGES LISTED:

Synaesthetic Cinema Page

Expanded Cinema and Multiplex Holography - Holographic Cinema 1970's

Sharon McCormack Collection & Archives - Multiplex Holography

Essays - Interviews on Avant-Garde Films - Razutis

Holographic Art by Al Razutis

Stereoscopic 3D Video Film Art by Al Razutis

Visual Alchemy Home Page