* (restored)
Compiled chronologically from Gregory Markopoulos’s Christmas Carol in 1940 to George Kuchar’s Christmas video series in the 1990s and 2000s and to Stan Brakhage’s recent music video for Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas,” this mini-list of “Xmas experimental films” suggests a collaged memory of dark celebration of a globally loved holiday in the gleefully glitching minds of experimental filmmakers exploring furtive and nebulous sub-worlds with their daring challenges to the filmic formal and thematic conventions. Incandescent and disruptive frames, colors and shapes, and choreography of gloomy spirits in these experimental films may provide solace, if not luminous vectors, to the viewers searching for the different meanings and delights of Christmas underneath the indifferent surface of its universal commercialization and unequal fractionalization of holidayscape. – Hyemin
1. CHRISTMAS CAROL
Gregory Markopoulos/1940/b&w/silent/8mm/3 min.
“little did I know when I made my first film at the age of twelve, [A] Christmas Carol, three minutes long…that the language of film was in constant birth within me, myself as a filmmaker” — Markopoulos recollects. In his hometown Toledo, Ohio, 12 years old Markopoulos borrowed a Super 8 camera and made a silent version of A Christmas Carol based on the story by Charles Dickens, starring Markopoulos himself, Andrew Markopoulos, Elaine Markopoulos and childhood friends. Preserved by the Oesterreichisches Filmmsuem, Vienna and Temenos Archive, Zurich. (No public image online available)
2. FIREWORKS
Kenneth Anger/1947/b&w/music: Ottorino Respighi/35mm/15 min.
“Anger’s most openly Surrealist film is an exquisitely crafted and choreographed dream of feverish desire, starring Anger (17 years old?) himself and filmed in his childhood home in Santa Monica while his parents were away for the weekend. Inspired by the trance films of Maya Deren and the Zoot Suit riots that had recently ignited the Greater Los Angeles area, Fireworks trembles with an ardent search for poetry within moments of unleashed violence and passion.” — (Harvard Film Archive)
Dreamer: [voice over narration] “In Fireworks, I released all the explosive pyrotechnics of a dream. Inflammable desires dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness are ignited that night by the libertarian matches of sleep, and burst forth in showers of shimmering incandescence. These imaginary displays provide a temporary relief.”
3. CHRISTMAS U.S.A.
Gregory Markopoulos/1949/b&w/silent/16mm/13 min.
“Christmas-USA-1949 (aka Christmas USA) weaves together documentary and fiction to convey a moment of awakening, and was shot at the ‘Cavalcade of Amusements’ travelling fairground, and in the Markopoulos family home and local surrounds.” Its closing credits declare “the end of a period.” – http://www.lafilmforum.org/archive/spring-2015/gregory-j-markopoulos-early-films-of-the-40s-and-50s/
4. CHRISTMAS ON EARTH
Barbara Rubin/1963/b&w/(with color filters on the projector lens)/silent(music from a live radio)/16mm/29 min.
“In 1963, Rubin directed Christmas on Earth – her only film, screened on two superposed screens – a transgressive film inspired by the poem “A Season in Hell” written by Arthur Rimbaud in 1873. In combining through an orgiastic ritual, the self-destructive passions of the young filmmaker – 17 years old at this time – and the aspirations of emancipation from her time, Christmas on Earth became quickly a totemic artwork of the underground scene.” – https://expcinema.org/site/en/events/barbara-rubin-christmas-earth-season-hell
“A radio must be hooked up to your P.A. system with a nice cross-section of psychic tumult, like an AM rock station turned on and played loud.” – Barbara Rubin from New York Filmmakers’ Cooperative Catalog No. 7
Excerpt
Full online: http://www.ubu.com/film/rubin_christmas.html
5. HALLELUJAH THE HILLS
Adolfas Mekas /1963/b&w/35mm/82 min.
(with Peter H. Beard, Marty Greenbaum, Sheila Finn, Peggy Steffans, Jerome Hill, Taylor Mead. Camera: Ed Emshwiller. Assistant: Jonas Mekas. Editing: Adolfas Mekas. Music: Meyer Kupferman)
Adolfas Mekas, born in Lithuania, arrived in the US with his brother Jonas (Mekas) in 1949. They founded Film Culture, the magazine of independent cinema, in 1954. “Hallelujah the Hills is a gloriously funny and far-out farce about two great big overgrown boy scouts who pratfall in love with the same girl. The weirdest, wooziest, wackiest screen comedyS a slapstick poem, an intellectual hellzapoppin, a gloriously fresh experiment and experience in the cinema of the absurd, the first cubistic comedy of the new world cinema.” – Time Magazine, 1963
6. 9/64: O TANNENBAUM (Oh Christmas Tree)
Kurt Kren/ 1964 /color/silent/16mm to digital/3 min.
“In 9/64: O TANNENBAUM (Oh CHRISTMAS TREE), a Viennese Actionist filmmaker Kren offers a more visually descriptive development of a Mühl ‘action.’ The images have been chosen to follow a more dramatic sequence, probably because the action itself contained a wide range of images and materials ….” – Stephen Dwoskin (and a little edited by me)
“9/64 O Tannenbaum”, or “Oh Christmas tree” brings us back to Otto Mühl. The title refers to a Christmas tree but it’s different to any Christmas I’ve experienced. In front of a shoddy Christmas tree a man lying with a board on top of him, with his cock sticking out of the board. The board is covered with a number of things we saw from the other two Mühl performances – feathers, paint, food. Later a woman and a man are being spray painted on with red paint. It’s very hard to get into detail with these films because so much is happening is such short timeframe. But to sum it up: nude man and woman, and they are covered in either food or paint. Sometimes against a wall, sometimes with body parts sticking out through cut-out holes in a board or bag. And at one point they put glasses on the penis, which is just silly!” – Ronny (at http://www.filmbizarro.com/view_review.php?review=kurtkrenactionfilms.php)
Full online: https://noodlemagazine.com/watch/6774583_149955415
7. 10C/65: 10c-65 Brus Wunscht Euch Seine Weihnachten (BRUS WISHES YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS)
Kurt Kren/1965/b&w/silent/16mm/3 min.
“A kind of home movie made in Brus’ apartment. Brus’ Christmas wishes can be seen on a poster which he painted and which he holds for a short time in front of the camera.”
8. LIGHTS
Marie Menken /1966/color/silent/16mm/6.30 min.
“Made during the brief Christmas-lit season, usually between the hours of midnight and 1:00 A.M., when vehicle and foot traffic was light, over a period of three years. Based on store decorations, window displays, fountains, public promenades, Park Avenue lights, building and church facades. I had to keep my camera under my coat to warm it up, as the temperature was close to zero much of the time.” – Marie Menken
9. WHITE CHRISTMAS
Harun Farocki/1968/b&w/music:Bing Crosby/16mm/3 min.
“One of the many films drawing a connection between Christmas and war. It is unclear whether the longing for a white Christmas is being taken seriously, or whether it is intended as a denunciation. In either event, America’s war in Vietnam is denounced.” – Harun Farocki (at http://www.harunfarocki.de/films/1960s/1968/white-christmas.html)
10. MERRY CHRISTMAS
Jerome Hill/1969/color/sound/16mm to digital/ 3min.
“Christmas comes to New York together with Joseph and Mary on a donkey. Animation.” – Noel Productions
11. CHRISTMAS CAROLS IN THE SHOWER
Videofreex/1971/b&w/mono/open reel video/20 min.
“As a testament to the Videofreex joyful investment in the medium of video, Skip Blumberg, Bart Friedman, and Nancy Cain take turns singing Christmas carols in the shower on Christmas Day. Audible from a range of proximity—from the end of the long hallway to the intimate space behind the shower curtain—the Videofreex entertain one another with rousing renditions of ‘Oh Holy Night’ and ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town,’ while playfully experimenting with the potential that the visual properties of condensation and steam, and bathroom acoustics offer up for video recording. The tape concludes with Ellen and Carol’s casual conversing on the couch, further emphasizing the communal nature of the group and their shared interest in capturing the pace and flow of everyday life.” —Faye Gleisser
Excerpt online: http://www.vdb.org/titles/christmas-carols-shower (Video Data Bank)
12. CHRIST MASS SEX DANCE
Stan Brakhage/1991/color/sound/16mm to Digital/6 min.
“This work, composed of six rolls of superimposed images set to Jim Tenney’s electronic music track “Blue Suede,” is a celebration of the balletic restraints of adolescent sexuality-shaped (in this instance) by “The Nutcracker Suite” of Tchaikovsky as well as the gristly roots of Elvis Presley.” — (from http://film-makerscoop.com/catalogue/stan-brakhage-christ-mass-sex-dance)
“Because it is so highly edited, James Tenney’s ‘Blue Suede’ is so meaningfully conjunctive with the possibilities of cinema. Its editing is for the purpose of creating metaphor, so that whatever the words are of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, recutting allows submerged grunts and vulgarities to emerge from the track.” –Stan Brakhage
13. Holiday Xmas Video of 1991
George Kuchar/1991/color/digital/21 min.
“Amid the greenery of what should be a White Christmas, there sits the blackness close to my heart; and beyond that there bellows a legion of behemoths who know not shame nor guilt. A homeless herd of heaven on earth that smell of fish and exotic ports of call. A call I fail to heed.” – George Kuchar
Excerpt online: http://www.vdb.org/titles/holiday-xmas-video-1991 (Video Data Bank)
14. HOLIDAZE
George Kuchar/1994/color/sound/digital/126 min.
“A time of cheer and chill, giving and getting, chomping and chewing. It’s all here in black and white plus monochromes and kodachromes and digitized delicacies. The first tape of ’94 is launched amid funereal frivolity.” – George Kuchar
Excerpt online: http://www.vdb.org/titles/holidaze-1994 (Video Data Bank)
15. Dingleberry Jingles
George Kuchar/1994/color/digital/21 min.
Christmas is here again in this diary of glittering gifts, furry friends, underground movie making, and grotesque greetings. A veneer of good cheer coats the surface like thin ice, so proceed with caution! – George Kuchar
Excerpt online: http://www.vdb.org/titles/dingleberry-jingles (Video Data Bank)
16. HAPPY-END
Peter Tscherkassky/1996/Digital/12 min.
“HAPPY-END is a found-footage film. The original material stems from a Viennese married couple who filmed themselves over the 1960s and ’70s. The films were shot from a tripod, using a shutter release extension cable. They are cheerful documentaries of various celebrations where the camera is, quite naturally, included in the company. At first glance the compression of the shots in HAPPY-END works as a comedy with partly involuntary participants. But the obvious light-heartedness and joie de vivre is so infectious that one cannot laugh at them, only with them. At the same time, HAPPY-END is a requiem for two people who died long ago. The vanity of human existence peeps between egg liqueur and sweet cakes. In the end HAPPY-END is a tragicomedy.” – Bert Rebhandl
“I wanted to bestow the couple (note: Peter Tscherkassky’s own parents) a dignified resurrection and organized the footage so that, temporally speaking, the material runs in reverse and the players are steadily rejuvenated. (…) The finale is reached with the woman’s spirited dance that culminates in a freeze-frame, her face expressing an equal measure of joy and pain. Between egg-nog and Sachertorte the vanity of human existence rears its head. Ultimately Happy-End is a tragicomedy.” – Peter Tscherkassky
Stream the film: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/tscherkassky02/
17. L.A. CHRISTMAS
Kip Fulbeck/1996/b&w/mono/digital/13 min.
“L.A. Christmas : documents the quintessential American Christmas in a delightfully playful home movie about home movies, featuring a 9-year-old black belt, Buddhists butchering Christmas carols and a nephew reciting pi to 200 digits” — (from http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/mrcvault/videographies/fulbeck-kip-kip-fulbeck-selected-videos)
Excerpt online: http://www.vdb.org/titles/la-christmas (Video Data Bank)
18. A JUNKY’S CHRISTMAS
Bryan Konefsky/2002/16.30 min.
“Ein kultureller Spagat: William S. Burroughs meets James Stuart. Konefsky gelingt ein umgekehrter Arbeits-Prozess, er passt die Bildebene, Frank Capras populär komödiantisches Melodrama «It’s a Wonderful Life», der Tonebene an. Die unverwechselbare Stimme Burroughs, welcher seine titelgebende Kurzgeschichte liest, lässt Biedermann Stuart als Junky in die Filmgeschichte eingehen.” — (http://videoex.ch/2003/film.php@film_id=50&subprog_id=25&prog_id=10.html)
“In this short cinematic intervention, Bryan Konefsky brings together two icons from opposite ends of the American cultural spectrum. Here, images from Frank Capra’s 1946 movie It’s A Wonderful Life collide with the words of visionary author William S. Burroughs’ reading of his story “The Junkie’s Christmas.” The results are surprising as an American dream becomes an American nightmare. “ — (Bryan Konesfky’s Vimeo video description)
19. CHRISTMAS TREE STAND (Part 1)
Bruce McClure/2004/16mm/30min.
“For Christmas Tree Stand, McClure begins with a stark white circle that flickers and pulsates on a handmade flat-black screen. A second projection, more diffuse, soon joins in and provides a kind of halo that transforms the circle into a sphere. These unified images simultaneously expand and contract as McClure adjusts the brightness of each projection through a rheostat. The black-and-white flicker produces a perceptual phenomenon of riotous chromatic color.” – David Dinnell (http://mfj-online.org/journalPages/MFJ50/mcclure.html)
20. FRIGID ESCAPADES
George Kuchar/ 2007/color/stereo/dv video/10 min.
“This is actually a rather warm, Xmas greeting which features some thawed items in full action as the Yuletide logs flicker and forks plunge earthward toward smoking piles of nourishment. Skyscrapers rimmed in brilliance loom over icy pools of skating revelers as young and old slice their way to total fulfillment on granny’s turkey carcass.” — George Kuchar
Excerpt online: http://www.vdb.org/titles/frigid-escapades (Video Data Bank)
21. HIGHWAY HOME
Esther Johnson /2008/color/stereo/digital/3 min.
“A contemplative, static study of an unlikely landmark in an unlikely place. Normally only glimpsed in passing, Stott Hall Farm, a cottage built in 1737, floats islandlike in the middle if the M62 in West Yorkshire, whilst cars and lorries thunder past on both sides. Despite the farm seemingly being a monument to stubbornness, the urban myth being that the farmer refused to leave when the motorway was built in the 1970s, the truth of the story is that the east- and westbound carriageways could not meet due to the lie of the land, and the motorway had to be parted around the cottage to avoid landslips.” — (http://blanchepictures.com/highway-home)
22. Solstice
George Kuchar/2009/color/music:Andy Ditzler/3.30 min.
“Solstice is a music video illustrating the feelings inspired by this holiday song written by a young man I met in Atlanta, Georgia, Andy Ditzler. My students and I, at the San Francisco Art Institute, concocted the visuals to accompany the tune and the result should evaluate all those suffering from blues of every shade and intensity.” — George Kuchar
23. All I Want For Christmas-Mariah Carey
Stan Brakhage/2015(?)/color/sound/4min.
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It’s very misty and cold here too, if that helps at all. I’m happy your family’s warmth is backpedaling the weirdness of being there. How long are you visiting? Oh, the meeting with the French producer was a total fiasco. I might’ve have guessed since it was set up by our beyond horrible producer. He told us the guy would come in as co-producer of the film and give us free facilities to work in and probably free technicians to do the finishing work we need. Which would have saved the day. But what the guy actually was offering was for us to rent his very expensive facilities and pay his expensive people to work with us, so it was a lie. And since we have no money at all, it felt like a cruel joke. So our terrible situation continues. But, yes, we will eat a presumably scrumptious bûche tomorrow. That’s something. My head/chest cold is gradually fading away, so I’m ok, thank you. I loved Xmas trees back when I was a kid and they would have intensely exciting packages piled up underneath them waiting for Xmas morning, but I think to get a Xmas tree here where there are no presents or people to open them would probably be a little depressing, so no. I’m guessing you guys have one up and all set to charm you on the big day? Maybe if love will give me this Xmas tree, G? ** NLK, Yes, I think that is her name. Nice sleuthing there. I’ve been in Lyon a few times, and it seemed kind of nice. Maybe a little too uneventful to actually live there. Yeah, I know people who live here who came from small French towns who say ‘Paris too intense for me’, and, coming from the States, I’m like ‘Paris … intense? In what possible sense?’ Other French cities … Marseilles is very interesting, but I sure wouldn’t want to live there. I sort of liked Rennes for some reason, I don’t remember why. Oh, and, again, I don’t know why, but I am rather fond of Morlaix. What about you? There’s super potential in your story concept/ideas. I don’t know, fiction can take a long time to gel for me. I sometimes have to fiddle with it forever. So maybe the time it’s taking is okay? But it is possible to get stuck on something and end up spinning your wheels wastefully. And there is definite value to taking a break as long as you go back after your head’s clear. I don’t know. I get the dilemma though. Yeah, I’ve only managed to corral two friends for the buche imbibing since everyone’s off with family and so on. So I’m going to prepare to be very hungry tomorrow. Awesome day of days to you. ** Charalampos, The blog missed you too. McCourt can be intimidating for you. I have a weird liking of being intimidated by writing. Harrington’s cool for sure. I should revive my old post about his stuff. Vibeage from Paris’s Xmas throne. ** _Black_Acrylic, Wow, Ben, that’s a really cool picture. Were you particularly into drawing when you were a kid? That’s some stylish, skilled drawing right there. A mini-tree … see, that’s kind of an appealing idea, huh. Especially in a kitchen for some reason. Right, Boxing Day, such a UK holiday. Seems so exotic, or its name at least. ** Sarah, Hi, Sarah! How cool to see you! How have you been? Are you doing Xmas in any form or shape or style? Very sadly Playboy Carti cancelled his show at the last moment. It was supposed be rescheduled, but I haven’t heard anything. Drat. I have not seen the new Ghibli, and I’ve been thinking maybe that’s a good Xmas day thing to do. Very Merry Xmas to you!!!!!! ** Kettering, Ah, gotcha. I know all about ugly stuff I can’t talk about, ha ha, or more like boo hoo. There’s actually a vegan version of Oscillococcinum. That’s what I take. I don’t know what’s in it, and maybe the company that makes it is lying, and I guess I should investigate. Eek. ** Steve Erickson, I think Frank Jaffe is the one who’s releasing ‘The People’s Joker’. And I think he went through a small hell to be able to do that. But yay for him. Oh, yes, there are Xmas haunted houses. A number of the ones in LA do Xmas versions every year. There’s a Xmas dark ride at the Xmas fair here in Paris every year. They basically just put Santa costumes on the usual monster props and play ‘scary’ Xmas music instead of heavy metal, but it’s appreciated. I so wish I could go to the Serge Daney series at Lincoln Center. That’s a real painful miss for me. ** Darby 🐧🤒, Dude, that is such great great great news!!!! Congratulations! That’s amazing! I have lots of friends on T. I don’t remember any of them complaining about any bad side effects or anything. But I’ll ask them when I talk with any of them next. Really, that’s so happy making, my friend! My driver’s license expired about 15 years ago, and I never renewed it, and it got lost when one of my long ago wallets was stolen. So I’m a passport only guy. (And don’t tell anyone, but I do drive when I’m in LA without a license.) I’m okay, My cold is taking its sweet time leaving my body’s theater, but it is leaving. You feeling alright? Enjoy the victory!!!!! ** Sypha, That’s a very charming statue, yes. My grandmother, who was a very good painter, painted a very amazing life-size Santa on wood that we used to have up at our house every year. I don’t know what happened to it. I wish I had a photo. I guess one of my siblings must have it. I mean I would obviously be very happy and honored galore if you want to do a Batman post. The drool is already forming, but no pressure. Thank you for wanting to, James. ** Right. Today I restore a beautiful and thrilling Xmas themed post from years ago made by a long time but recently quiet commenter/d.l. Hyemin. Exploring and utilising it will definitely add considerable spark to your Xmas, I swear. See you tomorrow.
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