Blonde Bombshell of Cosmic Fright

Gunvor Nelson's 1972 film TAKE OFF is an entertaining  and unsettling avant-garde vision. Burlesque performer Ellion Ness dances a full routine to the music of Pat Gleeson. She's lit with what is probably an arc lamp and glows beautifully against a black background. Nelson employs overlapping techniques in the editing so that Ness often appears ethereally doubled.

For about eight minutes it seems the purpose of the film is to celebrate the beauty of Ness and the gestures of her craft. Perhaps, too, there is some early deconstruction work going on regarding the male gaze (that term doesn't actually get introduced into feminist theory until 1975). 

The final minute of the film is utterly strange cinema. The exaltation of natural beauty gives way to something disturbing and profound. It becomes a strobing nightmare, in which Ness disassembles herself into a torso that goes spinning into outer space.

David Lynch fans will admire this precursor to his peculiar female type: a beautiful blonde woman who signals cosmic unsettledness; the strobing combat between inscrutable forces of light and dark. 

The movie sharing service Fandor allows you to stream TAKE OFF in HD. I rate Fandor an excellent site for the discovery of avant-garde films. 

Willie Nelson and the 4th of July

Seeing Willie Nelson on 4th of July weekend is at once a glorious and provocative way to celebrate the Birthday of the U.S.A. Willie sings about wanderers, contrarians, two-timers, and lonely drinkers as though their stories are the stories of the world. Born restless, he quickly eschewed any sense of "normal American life," and what he became -- a batch of honky-tonk and hippie sensibilities in the shape of a prankish, rough-looking gypsy king -- is a revered aspect of the American character. Tax evasion and pot busts will never mar him. To love Willie is to love America -- the hybridity we cherish, and the untamedness. 

Reviews of recent shows prior to the one I saw at Starplex in Dallas lament decline; there was much worry that age had finally caught up to Willie. But he was excellent for several thousand fans at Starplex; his voice was strong and his playing beautiful. Each of the critics that found previous shows messy and odd were also quick to mention Willie's special hospitality toward his audience -- the reaching out of his music to engage our care where he cares. A Willie Nelson show has never been about mathematical accuracy or exegencies of stage craft. Willie's mode is stand, deliver, and smile. What he often delivers is a spiritual experience. His way of truth-seeking through song describes the perseverance, openness, and grace intrinsic in the created being. He carries a message and speaks for all of us. 

Photo: Willie Nelson at Starplex, July 4th weekend, 2017.

Silent Light

Carlos Reygadas' film Silent Light made the New York Times list of "The 25 Best Films of the 21st Century So Far." The list has prompted many fun and aggravating debates. But Silent Light deserves the recognition, and I'm thrilled it made the list. The opening sequence is one of the greatest in cinema.  In my book, it is preceded only by the opening of Orson Welles' Othello.

I wore an article about Reygadas' film for the Texas arts journal Glasstire. Here is an excerpt:

"Carlos Reygadas is a high-minded wild thing out of Mexico City. He’s made four feature films, and all have screened at Cannes, where they were simultaneously harangued and cheered by critics. He employs a vintage camera and lenses and a small crew. The pictures are marvelous and totally out of sync with Hollywood norms. Reygadas is like a Romantic poet of the cinema; his films suggest that a love of humankind comes through Nature. They describe a cosmogenic imagination, in that each film is like an origin story and a meditation on the infinite. The images are, by turns: beautiful, hallucinogenic, brutal, erotic, and subversively funny."

You can find the full article here: Glasstire

Video Art with the Canon 5D

Tropic Pictures is proud to shoot Colette Copeland's video art pieces. Her latest, titled Bearding, is shot with Canon 5D Mark iii. The location is beneath a DART rail trestle, somewhere along the White Rock Creek Trail, Dallas. In this scene, Copeland's character, The Victorian Woman, traps and shaves her frequent spoil, The Man, played by Adam George. (Lens: Canon 85mm 1.8)

Find out more about Tropic Pictures:

TropicPictures.com

Artful Cinema

Joan Mitchell

My enthusiasm for color is so strong it can take over my memory.  Some of my favorite black and white films are those I once mistakenly remembered as being in color: Hiroshima, Mon Amour; I Confess; The Lady from Shanghai.  This also happens to me with abstract art. Recently I was looking at Franz Kline pictures. At the same time that my sense of wonder for the art renewed, I felt anxiety moving me to self-doubt. Why had I remembered there being more color in his work? -- surely that seems absurd. 

I worried that, upon seeing Marion Cajori's film, Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an Abstract Painter, I might be in a situation again of questioning my reality. Fortunately, this was not the case. Mitchell's paintings flame out from the film in wild traceries of color. 

It is a short documentary, compared with other of Cajori's portraits -- runtime is less than an hour. Cajori is limited by Mitchell's reluctance to talk. Mitchell seems neither unfriendly nor inarticulate. Rather, there are flashes in which she possesses the hospitality and skill of a masterful storyteller. What stops Mitchell from talking is probably an irresolvable contradiction. The color in her paintings is out of spontaneous expressions: the color in her paintings is out of a complicated reflexive process invested with meditations on nature. For Mitchell, it seems truth is impossible with language. Only image will do.

It is a pleasure to watch Mitchell at work in Paris and talk about the quality of light there. She doesn't react to light intellectually, like a poet does. Her way of transposing light into jaggedly arranged strokes of color is a process language doesn't match. Her paintings suggest a preconscious authority -- the wilderness in stride. 

Image: "Ladybug" by Joan Mitchell, 1957

Sensible Crowdsourcing Alternatives

Tropic Pictures is now distributing short films. Proceeds from sales of short films will help fund two feature length films being produced this summer. 

The first short film on offer is THE MOCK DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD.

THE MOCK DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD has screened at some progressive festivals, including Snake Alley Festival of Film (detailed twice in MovieMaker Magazine) and the luminous Dallas Video Festival. The film checks familiarity and carves out its own spooky but funny philosophical terrain. Watch it today for a modest price. Proceeds go to funding a feature narrative that Tropic Pictures is producing this Summer. Tropic Pictures believes that making short films available commercially is a sensible alternative to crowdsourcing. Rather than ask you to bank on a feature film's potential and to wait months for any news, you can purchase a really cool short film for little money and enjoy it immediately, knowing that, at the same time, you have also contributed to ambitious and intelligent feature programming by Tropic Pictures. Click below to watch a trailer of THE MOCK DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD. Then go ahead, pay the modest fee. Support alternative cinema!

Watch trailer and Download film at this link:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/75063

Visit TropicPictures.com of Facebook for more details.

Making a Documentary: "As Above, So Below"

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW is the name of a recent exhibition of American fraternal society art, which included paintings, banners, ritual objects and costumes from the golden age of fraternal societies, 1850 to 1930. The exhibition was held at Webb Gallery in Waxahachie, Texas.

                                   https://vimeo.com/158129838

The exhibition was timed with the release of a book by the same name, published by University of Texas press, and written by the art historian Lynne Adele and the co-owner of Webb Gallery, Bruce Lee Webb.

Tropic Pictures, a motion picture arts company, is making a documentary centered on the historical paintings and objects exhibited at Webb Gallery, but also extending to artists and lodge members in the present day, who continue to assert the lore and iconography of secret societies into American visual culture.

                                                                     Video

Viewers will be introduced to secret societies, such as the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias, and explore the function and meaning of fraternal objects. The film will shine a light on the esoteric knowledge and moral teachings expressed in fraternal lodges, and radiate the sense of fun that comes with discovering secret things. 

In order to finance this documentary, Tropic Pictures is releasing several videos, which will range from one to five minutes in length. These videos will feature excerpts of interviews, information about fraternal objects, and early recordings of fraternal music.

These video downloads are modestly priced and when you purchase them, the proceeds go toward the costs of finishing the film.

                                                     Video

Tropic Pictures needs to earn money to photograph distant lodge locations and visit artists and historians, that we may interview them about their ideas and studies.

Please make regular visits to the Tropic Pictures website. Go to the page AS ABOVE , SO BELOW. Videos will appear regularly.

Funding for the documentary film  AS ABOVE, SO BELOW comes from the purchase of these informative, well-produced videos. You will also find a donate button, if you wish to increase your contribution.

AS Above, So Below, the new documentary film by Tropic Pictures. Please find more information at 

www.Tropic Pictures.com.