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Bubsy Berkeley’s Tribute to Mae West
Busby Berkeley’s tribute to screen sex goddess Mae West as imagined by director Paul Bush. Due to the explicit sexual imagery a picture cannot be shown.
Paul Bush Retrospective: Challenging the Boundaries
90 minutes
Challenging the boundaries between fiction, documentary and animation, Paul Bush is a one-of-kind experimental filmmaker.
A self-taught filmmaker and a lecturer at countless art and film courses around the world, Paul Bush has been producing experimental films since the 1980s. Perhaps most well-known for the frequent use of stop-frame animation, his works are relentlessly inventive and ambitious, and have won him numerous awards. Bush's films challenge the boundaries between fiction, documentary and animation and showcase various experimental techniques. But above all, beauty is central to his oeuvre, whether he focuses on time, narrative, history or storytelling. Kaboom thinks it's time to dedicate a retrospective to Paul Bush... with Paul Bush. He will be talking to animator Anna Eijsbouts and you'll get to see various of his shorts that prove why he is such a respected name in the experimental film scene.
This program screened as part of Kaboom Animation Festival 2022
Showing in this program
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Elegy
Stone and light, just stone and light.
Furniture Poetry
‘What prevents me from supposing that this table either vanishes or alters its shape
when no one is observing it and then when someone looks at it again changes back? But one feels like saying - who is going to suppose such a thing?’
(Ludwig Wittgenstein On Certainty 1949-51)
The film-maker accepts the challenge of the philosopher and changes not only a table but also chairs, shoes, jugs, teapots and almost everything else lying around his house.
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His Comedy
The poet Dante is taken by Virgil through the gates of the city of desolation and into the centre of hell. what he sees is not simply an apocalyptic vision of the punishment that awaits sinners after death but also the very real horrors committed by human hands on earth. the film is based on Gustav Dore’s nineteenth century woodblock engravings illustrating Dante’s The Divine Comedy and all the images are produced by engraving directly into the surface of colour filmstock.
Jekyll and Hyde
Imagine that the camera is possessed with a psychosis similar to human schizophrenia; suppose that this disease subtly changes every single frame of film while leaving the narrative superficially intact. Then imagine that these symptoms came on as a result of the trauma of recording bizarre or horrific events, for instance those of the 1941 horror film Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
Lay Bare
A composite portrait of the human body assembled from details captured by close-up photography of over five hundred men and women of all ages and from all over the world. The surface of the human body is revealed as it is rarely seen except in the most intimate relationships we have with our family or our lovers; a portrait of the body that is both sexy and tender, elegant and witty.
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Orgiastic Hyper-Plastic
An animated extravaganza of plastic collected from beaches, roadsides, attics and junk shops. This is an elegy to a love affair that has gone sour, a fond farewell to that most beautiful material that has enslaved our planet – plastic. This six minute experimental film is a development of Paul Bush’s pioneering technique of animated photographs and stop frame animation of objects.
Ride
Hundreds of motorbikes are animated frame by frame in this homage to the iconic motorcycle design and culture of the 1950s and 60s. A rider prepares his bike and departs on an idealised journey into the countryside and into the future.
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Shinjuku Samurai
The day is Friday, August 27, 2004. The Samurai are twenty six citizens of Tokyo, stopped as they pass in the busy Shinjuku business and entertainment district of the city. The warriors are asked to stand completely still for five minutes in front of a time- lapse camera while the teeming crowds of the biggest city in the world stream by.
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Still Life with Small Cup
A radical reworking of an etching by the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi, brought to life by engraving frame by frame directly into the photographic emulsion of colour filmstock. The viewer is taken on a journey through the etching, accompanied by the sounds that the artist might have heard from his window as he worked.
While Darwin Sleeps
More than three thousand insects appear in this film each for a single frame. As the colours glow and change across their bodies and wings it seems that the genetic programme of millions of years is taking place in a few minutes. It is a rampant creation that seems to defy the explanations of evolutionists and fundamentalists. It is like a mescaline vision dreamt by Charles Darwin.
The film is inspired by the insect collection of Walter Linsenmaier in the natural history museum of Luzern. As each insect follows the other, frame by frame, they appear to unfurl their antennae, scuttle along, flap their wings as if trying to escape the pinions which attach them forever in their display cases. Just for a moment the eye is tricked into believing that these dead creatures still live . .
