Pistol Poem (1960) by Brion Gysin

Brion Gysin was a close friend of the beat generation author, William Burroughs. He was also involved in much experimentation with audio, the written word, and visual poetry. In 1960 he recorded his “Pistol Poem” in London for the BBC which had commissioned him to produce some work for broadcast. The recording engineer reportedly almost left the recording session because he said he could feel 'evil' coming from the bizarre “poem” which inter-spliced audio samples of Gysin reciting number counts with gunshots.

Budo: The Art of Killing (1978) by Hisao Masuda

Budo: The Art of Killing is an award winning 1978 Japanese martial arts documentary created and produced by Hisao Masuda and financed by The Arthur Davis Company. Considered a cult classic, the film is a compilation of various Japanese martial art demonstrations by several famous Japanese instructors such as Gozo Shioda, Taizaburo Nakamura and Teruo Hayashi.
Martial arts featured in the film include: Karate, Aikido, Kendo, Sumo, and Judo among others. The only modern Japanese martial art not to be featured in the film is Kyudo.
Budo: The Art of Killing is a compilation of various gendai budō each demonstrated by famous Japanese martial artists from the late 1970s. The film treats its subject matter with deep respect and demonstrates a great reverence for both Budō and Japanese culture in general. The film begins with Hayashi Kunishiro reenacting seppuku, the ritualistic form of suicide practiced by Japanese samurai during Feudal Japan. This is followed by a demonstration of yabusame and footage of a samurai cavalry battle. The narrator then explains the connection between Budō and its universal symbol—the nihonto. After a demonstration of the effectiveness of the Japanese sword, the audience is shown the techniques developed by Okinawan farmers to combat the sword. Karate-do master Teruo Hayashi then demonstrates Okinawan weapon techniques. The film moves along with further footage of karate-do including makiwara training by Fujimoto (including the infamous shot of him striking a locomotive and chopping a beer bottle) and a demonstration of the nunchaku by Satoru Suzuki, a weapon made famous by Bruce Lee. The film moves to footage of traditional Judo training such as mat rolls, pole-hopping, bunny-hops, and practice of hip throws using rubber bands tied around trees. The film moves on to discuss naginata-do, a budō popular with female martial art practitioners in Japan. Aikido is then demonstrated by Gozo Shioda, the founder of Yoshinkan aikido interspersed with shots of leaves falling into a brook. To emphasize the film's theme of "mind and body are one in Budo" the viewer is shown Shinto practitioners fire walking. The film then shows training in a sumo stable with rikishi Takamiyama, where the training shown is both tough and cruel. Scenes of young people practicing kobudo on the beach follow the sumo demonstration as the narrator discusses the succession of Budō to younger generations. The film explains the importance of kata with Teruo Hayashi demonstrating more karate-do kumite. The narrator explains, "... karate training can be both severe and cruel, yet a sword can take away a life with one swing." The film shifts its focus to sword arts with demonstrations of iaido, tameshigiri and kendo by Shuji Matsushita and Tomoo Koide as the narrator discusses the fear instilled by the Japanese sword. The "limitless" connection between Zen Buddhism and Budō is discussed with Shuji Matsushita on the receiving end of a strike from an abbot's kyosaku while in zazen. This is followed by a highlight of the film in which Taizaburo Nakamura demonstrating various sword cuts including a shot filmed in slo-motion showing the shocking speed in which a blade can behead a man (1/100 of a second). Continuing with a focus on the sword, the film shows the art of traditional nihonto forging by swordsmith Amada Akitsugu, considered a national living treasure in Japan. Budo: The Art of Killing concludes with scenes of Noh as the narrator explains, "As long as the universal truths of heaven, the earth and man remain, the spirit of Budo shall endure."

Hisao Masuda had no luck trying to find financing for Budo: Art of Killing in his native Japan until he came across Arthur Davis, an American film exhibitor who ran a distribution company in Tokyo. Davis stated he funded the film out of the respect and gratitude he felt towards Japan. The Art of Killing won first prize at the 1978 Miami International Film Festival, but did not find an American distribution deal until 1981, when it was acquired by Crown International Pictures and received a limited release in 1982 under the title Budo. The film eventually got a VHS release through Prism Entertainment which helped build its cult status among Japanese martial arts practitioners and aficionados. The film was eventually remastered and released on DVD in 2005 by Synapse Films.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budo:_The_Art_of_Killing

Boy & Bicycle (1962) by Ridley Scott

Boy and Bicycle is the first film made by Ridley Scott. The black and white short was made on 16mm film while Scott was a photography student at the Royal College of Art in London in 1962. It was made initially on a budget of £65 using a Bolex 16mm cine-camera, and completed with the help of a grant provided by the BFI's Experimental Film Fund.















UK 1962 Dir Ridley Scott
Produced by Ridley Scott
Production company: the BFI Experimental Film Fund
Starring Tony Scott
c. 27 mins. Black and white

The film follows a boy as he plays truant from school and visits various locations around the seaside town on his bicycle. We hear his thoughts in a stream of consciousness voice-over partly inspired by James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses.

Although a very early work - Scott would not direct his first feature for another 15 years - the film is significant in that it features a number of visual elements that would be become motifs of Scott's work. The film features the cooling towers of the Imperial Chemical Industries works at Billingham, foreshadowing images in Alien, Blade Runner and Black Rain. The central element of the Boy and the Bicycle is re-used in Scott's advert for Hovis of the early 1970s. The film features Scott's younger brother Tony as the boy.
Scott secured finance from the British Film Institute to complete the editing and sound in 1965 including a track by John Barry called "Onward Christian Spacemen" which originally appeared as the "b" side of the theme to the television series The Human Jungle . Scott wanted to use the existing recording by Barry, but the composer was so impressed by the young film maker he agreed to produce a new recording for the film at limited cost.
This film has been released digitally as an extra on the DVD for Scott's first feature The Duellists.
"Courtesy of the British Film Institute (BFI) under the terms of the Creative Archive Licence at http://www.bfi.org.uk/creative".

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_and_Bicycle

YOU CAN WATCH THE FULL FILM HERE:
http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/watch-movies/boy-and-bicycle-0

or watch the short clip below:

Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138 4EB (1967) by George Lucas

Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138 4EB is a short film directed by George Lucas in 1967 while he attended the University of Southern California. The movie exists in 16mm reference print, on videocassette with a run time of 15 minutes, and on the special director's edition DVD of THX 1138,,an alternate version of Lucas' 1971 directorial debut which feature's newly added scenes. This short was used as the basis for Lucas' first feature film in 1971 titled, THX-1138 and starring Robert Duvall, Maggie McOmie, and Donald Pleasence.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Labyrinth:_THX_1138_4EB and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138

1:42:08 (known also as 1:42:08: A Man and His Car) (1966) by George Lucas

1:42:08 (known also as 1:42:08: A Man and His Car) was George Lucas's senior project at the University of Southern California in 1966. It stars racing lehend, Peter Brock and was named for the lap time of the Lotus 23 race car that was the subject of the film. It is a non-story, non-character, visual tone poem depicting the graphic beauty of a car going at full speed, and the only sound in it is the roar of the car's engine. Shot in color with a 14 man student crew, it was filmed at Willow Springs Raceway, north of Los Angeles, CA

reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1:42:08

Robotic Mouth

13 short films (1967-1970) by Otto Muehl

To watch the following Otto Muehl films click here.

1. Manopsychotisches Ballet (Fotograf by Hans Sohm and Kamera Jörg Siegert) (1970)
2.Investmentfonds (Fotograf by Ludwig Hoffenreich and Kamera Hermann Jauk) (1970)
3.Psychotic Party (1970)
4.Stille Nacht (Fotograf by Gebhardt and Kamera Hans Peter Kochenrath) (1969)
5.Kardinal (Kamera by Helmut Kronberger) (1967)
6.Psycho-Motorische Gerauschaktion (Kamera by Peter C. Fluger) (1967)
7.Sodoma (1969)
8.Wehrertüchtigung (Fotograf by Ludwig Hoffenreich and Kamera Peter C. Fluge) (1967)
9.Scheißkerl (1969) (Kamera by Kurt Kren)
10.Satisfaction (1968) (Kamera by Dobrovitsch and Kurt Kren)
11.Oh Sensibility (1970) (Fotograf by Ludwig Hoffenreich and Kamera Hermann Jauk)
12.Unknown Title, (Unknown Date)
13.Der Geile Wotan (1970) (Kamera by Kurt Kren)

"I set my sights on the human body and realized things
were moving at last, during my first material action,
I soiled a female body with mud, paint, rubbish and paste,
and tied it up in old rags and ropes dipped in mud."

- Otto Muehl, 1963

Otto Muehl (born June 16, 1925, at Grodnau, Burgenland, Austria) is an Austrian artist, who is best known as one of the co-founders as well as a main participant of Viennese Actionism. In 1972 he founded the Friedrichshof Commune, which has been viewed by some as an authoritarian sect that existed for several years before falling apart in the 1990s. Muehl himself was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment for sexual offences with adolescents. He was released after serving six and a half years and set up a smaller commune in Portugal.

In 1943, Otto Muehl served in the Wehrmacht and in 1944 he was sent to the Front. After the war, he studied teaching German and History, and Pedagogy of Art at the Wiener Akademie der bildenden Künste.

In the sixties his aim was 'to overcome painting on canvas through staging the process of its destruction'. He made rhizomatic structures with scrap iron ("Gerümpelplastiken"), but soon proceeded to the "Aktion" in the vein of the New York Happenings. In 1962, when he was 37, the first "Aktion" "Die Blutorgel" was performed in Muehl's atelier in the Perinetgasse by Muehl himself, Adolf Frohner and Hermann Nitsch. The "Fest des psycho-physischen Naturalismus" and "Versumpfung einer Venus" followed in 1963. From 1964 to 1966 many "Malaktionen" were filmed by Kurt Kren and photographed by Ludwig Hoffenreich. In 1966 a new concept of Aktion was developed with Günter Brus: instead of the canvas, the body became the scene of action. In 1968, Muehl, Brus and Oswald Wiener organised an Aktionsveranstaltung "Kunst und Revolution" in the University of Vienna, which caused a scandal in the press; they were arrested and Brus emigrated to Berlin.

Gradually, Muehl began to distance himself from "Aktion". He regarded the "happening as a bourgeois artform, mere art". The "transition from art to life" resulted in the founding of the commune as a kind of anti-society. All members submitted to the so-called Aktionsanalyse. The declared aim was the destruction of bourgeois marriage and private property, free love, and collective education of the children. In 1974 he played a small role as a member of an anarchic/therapy commune in Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie. In the eighties, tensions within the commune increased until they culminated in a revolt under the direction of Altenberg. When, on top of that, Muehl was arrested and imprisoned in 1991, the commune fell apart. In 1997, when he was 72, Muehl moved to Faro, Portugal to start a new commune experiment. Despite suffering from Parkinsons disease, Muehl continued his art work, and in 2002 developed "electric painting films", a new technique in which he paints digital photos from actions using a computer tablet and pen and edits the process into films.
References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Muehl