Omnibus: The Dance of the Seven Veils; A Comic Strip in 7 Episodes on the Life of Richard Strauss,1864-1946 (1970) by Ken Russell

Omnibus was an arts-based BBC television documentary series, broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom. It was first shown in 1967, and ended in 2003.





























Ken Russell at his best and most kitsch, a foretaste of energy and excitement of The Music Lovers. It is his first television film in color. The film has been described as a violent caricature of composer Richard Strauss. The comic strip approach and appearance of Hitler alienated his audience. A couple make love on the bed and just behind the bed is a chamber orchestra with Ken Russell himself conducting both the orchestra and the couple. When the Strauss family withdrew permission to use the music after the initial broadcast, Russell substituted Johan Strauss when excerpts from the film were broadcast (as in A British Picture). It was time for Ken to move on from the BBC and back into films.

Reference: http://www.iainfisher.com/russell/ken-russell-tv-omnibus.html

Knights on Bikes (1956) by Ken Russell

It starts with a cross and a knight in armour (played by Russell) who eventually rides a bike to rescue a damsel in distress. She is abducted by a man in a wheelchair (a recurring image with Russell) and a person who under his robes turns out to be a wolf. And suddenly the film ends. Possibly unfinished.

Peepshow (1956) by Ken Russell

A short silent film made for £100. During the making of this film Russell converted to Catholicism.

The Bogus Beggar's Academy trains beggars (dark glasses to appear to be blind, practising limping with crutches etc). But their earnings fall when a peepshow is set up. Through the hole in the wall is a professor and a mechanical life-size doll, played by Shirley Russell (then Shirley Kingdom)

The films is influenced by The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, and is also similar to the amateur films Roman Polanski was making round the same time (Two Men and a Wardrobe) but is well below the level of Polanski or of Russell's later Amelia and the Angel. The best parts are the photography from above of the crowd around the hole in the wall (compare with Hitchcock).

A nice touch is that the story (the film is silent so it is told in writing) is chalked to the pavement or painted on walls. And the opening credits with credits painted on umbrellas filmed from above, which are then removed to reveal the rest of the credits on the pavement, is imaginative.

The doll sequence would later be used in Gothic.

More Information:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049606/

http://www.iainfisher.com/russell/ken...

Antonio Gaudi (1961, BBC documentary) by Ken Russell

Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell (born 3 July 1927), known as Ken Russell, is an English film director. He is known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his controversial style. He has been criticized as being overly obsessed with sexuality and the church. His subject matter is often about famous composers, or based on other works of art which he adapts loosely. Russell began directing for the BBC, where he did creative adaptations of composers' lives which were unusual for the time. He also directed many feature films independently and for studios.
He is best known for his Oscar-winning film Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971), The Who's Tommy (1975), and the sci-fi film Altered States (1980).



Antoni Plàcid Guillem Gaudí i Cornet (25 June 1852–10 June 1926) – in English, normally referred to by the Spanish translation of his name, Antonio Gaudí^[3][4][5] – was a Catalan architect who belonged to the Modernist style (Art Nouveau) movement and was famous for his unique and highly individualistic designs.

Photograph of Antoni Gaudi (1878) by Pau Audouard.

For more information on Ken Russell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Russell

For more information on Antonio Gaudi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaudi

Las Hurdes (A.K.A.- Land Without Bread, Uncompromised Land, and Tierra Sin Pan) (English & French version w/Spanish subtitles) (1932) by Luis Bunuel

Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (1932), (English language: Land Without Bread or Unpromised Land) is a 27-minute-long documentary film directed by Luis Buñuel and co-produced by Buñuel and Ramon Acin. The narration was written by Buñuel, Rafael Sanchez Ventura, and Pierre Unik, with cinematography by Eli Lotar.

The film focuses on the Las Hurdes region of Spain, the mountainous area around the town La Alberca, and the intense poverty of its occupants. Buñuel, who made the film after reading the ethnographic study Las Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine (1927) by Maurice Legendre, took a Surrealist approach to the notion of the anthropological expedition. The result was a travelogue in which the narrator’s extreme (indeed, exaggerated) descriptions of human misery of Las Hurdes contrasts with his flat and disinterested manner.

Although some film scholars describe it as a documentary, Land Without Bread is in fact, according to film studies scholar Jeffrey Ruoff, an early (some might say prescient) parody of the barely invented genre of documentary filmmaking.

The film was originally silent, though Buñuel himself narrated when it was first shown. A French narration by actor Abel Jacquin was added in Paris in 1935. Buñuel used extracts of Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 4 for the music.

Buñuel slaughtered at least two animals to make Las Hurdes. He ordered an ailing donkey to be covered with honey so he could film it being stung to death by bees. Similarly, his crew shot a mountain goat and threw its carcass from a cliff for another sequence.

The film was banned in Spain from 1933 to 1936.

There is a Spanish-language dubbed version spoken by Francisco Rabal.

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

Below is the English dubbed version followed by the French dubbed version with Spanish subs. Enjoy!

Blood of the Beasts (1949) (dubbed in English) by Georges Franju

Blood of the Beasts (Le Sang des bêtes) is a 1949 short French documentary film written and directed by Georges Franju. Blood of the Beasts was Franju's first film and is narrated by Georges Hubert and Nicole Ladmiral. Franju's film contrasts peaceful scenes of Parisian suburbia with scenes from a slaughterhouse. The film documents the slaughtering of a horse, sheep, and calves; once the horse is stunned by a pistol, it is bled and butchered. The film is narrated without emotive language.

Franju states that he wasn't interested on the subject of slaughterhouses when he decided to make the film, but the location around the building was the Ourcq Canal allowing him to make a documentary film. Franju stated by using a documentary film format, he was able to use both locations as lyrical counterpoints and "to explain it as a realist while remaining a surrealist by displacing the object in another context. In this new setting, the object rediscovers its quality as an object".
Blood of the Beasts was made as a black and white film as an aesthetic. Franju states "If it were in colour, it'd be repulsive... the sensation people get would be physical one."

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Sang_des_b%C3%AAtes

Alejandro Jodorowsky's unrealized version of Frank Herbert's, DUNE

Poster for the unrealized Alejandro Jodorowsky version of Frank Herbert's, DUNE which would have starred Salvador Dali as the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV (with a reported salary of $100,000 an hour), Orson Welles as the Baron Harkonnen, Charlotte Rampling as Lady Jessica, and Jodorowski himself as Duke Leto Atreides. Brontis Jodorowsky (his son) would've played Paul Atreides. Other actors would've included Gloria Swanson, David Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Alain Delon, Hervé Villechaize and Mick Jagger. Jodorowski organized Harkonnen visualizations by H.R. Giger, costumes by Moebius (Bladerunner, The Abyss, Tron, The Fifth Element), effects by Dan O'Bannon (who later wrote Alien), spaceship designs by Chris Foss and music by Pink Floyd, Magma, Henry Cow and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Dali and Jodorowsky quarreled over money, and just as the storyboards, designs, and script were finished, the financial backing dried up. Frank Herbert travelled to Europe in 1976 to find that $2 million of the $9.5 million budget had already been spent in pre-production, and that Jodorowsky's script would result in a 14-hour movie ("It was the size of a phonebook", Herbert later recalled). Jodorowsky took creative liberties with the source material, but Herbert said that he and Jodorowsky had an amicable relationship. The rights for filming were sold once more, this time to Dino de Laurentiis. Although Jodorowsky was embittered by the experience, he stated that the Dune project changed his life.

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Jodorowsky
and http://www.duneinfo.com/unseen/jodorowsky.asp