In 1899, British photographer and inventor Edward Raymond Turner
patented the first color moving picture process, but it was so
complicated that it was never replicated. Following Turner's blueprints
and instructions for the process, researchers at the National Media Museum
digitally copied three frames of film taken from two rolls that were
discovered in 2009. The three frames were reconstructed in Photoshop
with red, green, and blue filters, similar to how they would have been
using Turner's original equipment through the use of colored gels.
As explained in the National
Media Museum's video, each frame of the original film had to be
re-photographed three times with each colored filter (RGB) and compiled
into the final product, which took about three years, thanks to federal
and private funding. The footage was then unveiled to the media for the
first time in 110 years — possibly for the first time ever.
The Hire is a series of short films made by BMW together with some of the worlds best directors. Beat the Devil - starring Clive Owen, Gary Oldman, James Brown, Danny Trejo, Marilyn Manson and based on a concept by David Fincher. Featuring the BMW Z4. Directed by Tony Scott.
MUSIC WITH ROOTS IN THE AETHER (1976)
Video
Portraits of Composers and their Music, this episode with Alvin Lucier
Produced and directed by Robert Ashley. Philip Makanna, Director and Camera;
Maggi Payne, Audio Recordist; Jerry Pearsall, Video Recordist and Technical
Director
also includes: Music For Solo Performer (1965)
Electronic music pioneer Alvin Lucier amplifies his own brain waves.
Nicolas Collins electronics. 1965.
In the early seventies, Robert Ashley produced and directed a 14-hour television opera/documentary about the work and ideas of seven American composers, Music with Roots in the Aether,
which premiered at the Festival d'Automne à Paris in 1976. It comprises
seven films, each two hours long, most of which have a live performance
preceded by an interview in a 'landscape'
Music with Roots
in the Aether is a music-theater piece in color video. It is the final version
of an idea that I had thought about and worked on for a few years: to make a
very large collaborative piece with other composers whose music I like. The
collaborative aspect of Music with Roots in the Aether is in the theater
of the interviews, at least primarily, and I am indebted to all of the composers
involved for their generosity in allowing me to portray them in this manner.
The piece turns
out to be, in addition, a large-scale documentation of an important stylistic
that came into American concert music in about 1960. These composers of the
"post-serial" / "post-Cage" movement have all made international
reputations for the originality of their work and for their contributions to
this area of musical compositions.
The style of the
video presentation comes from the need I felt to find a new way to show music
being performed. The idea of the visual style of Music with Roots in the
Aether is plain: to watch as closely as possible the action of the performers
and to not "cut" the seen material in any way--that is, to not editorialize
on the time domain of the music through arbitrary space-time substitutions.
The visual style
for showing the music being made became the "theater" (the stage)
for the interviews, and the portraits of the composers were designed to happen
in that style."
"Halber Mensch" (aka "1/2 Mensch") is a
1986 film by Japanese director Sogo Ishii with German band Einstürzende
Neubauten. It was originally released on VHS, and re-released on DVD in
2005. The film's title comes from the album of the same name.
Einstürzende Neubauten were in their creative prime when
punk film pioneer
Sohgo Ishii shot this 58-minute document in Tokyo during the
band's world
tour in 1985.
Set mostly in a condemned factory/junkpile (the former
Nakamatsu Ironworks),
the film features a tormental troupe of butoh dancers, fire,
FM Einheit repairing
his shoe, micro photography, industrial textures, live
footage from their Korakuen
Hall arena shows, one of their guerilla street actions, lots
of beautiful destruction
and amazing music.
It's extremely, lyrically visual, perhaps because Ishii
didn't feel the need to
hang everything on some skimpy plot this time and could just
let his camera do the talking.
Savage Messiah is a 1972 British biographical film of the
life of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, made by Russ-Arts and
distributed by MGM. It was directed and produced by Ken Russell with Harry Benn
as associate producer, from a screenplay by Christopher Logue, based on the
book Savage Messiah by H.S. Ede. Much of the content of Ede's book came from
letters sent between Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and his lover Sophie Brzeska. The
music score was by Michael Garrett (though music by Claude Debussy and
Alexander Scriabin was also used), and the cinematography by Dick Bush. The
sets were designed by Derek Jarman.
Starring: Dorothy Tutin, Scott Antony, Helen Mirren,
Lindsay Kemp, Peter Vaughan and Michael Gough.
