The Horror of Optical Illusions

story © Michael Betancourt | published November 22, 2013 | permalink |  |  

Bright Lights Film Journal no 82 has my new article: The Horror of Origins in Ron Honthaner's The House on Skull Mountain examines the emergent form of a death's head that appears graphically on screen in a way that is both inherently a part of the action (emergent from the composition itself) and a presentation of what is not (cannot be) shown on screen: Lorena's thoughts — her fear, signified by the voodoo drums, becoming manifest as the superimposed skull.

story © Michael Betancourt | published November 14, 2013 | permalink |  |  

The Last of the Mohicans: Oskar Fischinger’s “Symphony in Blue”

Rough translation of review originally published by FilmLiga, 15 November 1935, pp. 314-315

(314)​That the avant-garde as “movement” is dead no one will dare to doubt. They broke with confidence that a good-death are venturing with all sides the staff about her, and more or less officially has her first partisans agree “with the grave of the filmmaker” the deceased commemorated in FilmLiga. For us, that the avant-garde movement very dear have stood, falling from the contradiction of the judgments to ascertaining down two basic facts: first, that the “movement” within the limits of its experimental nature so useful and invaluable services has proven to aesthetics of the film that we miss only considering her labor at the stage of sound film. Second: that its continued existence, independently, was impossible purely due to reasons of the sound film at least, so it seemed. . . .

read more (971 words)

story © Michael Betancourt | published October 21, 2013 | permalink |  |  

The silent film actress Mae Murray, known as the “girl with bee-stung lips,” appears in fancy dress, pouting and flirting with the audience. Hers is an archetypal image of white feminine beauty from the start of the twentieth century, a form that was already old when the source film was shot in 1922, here glitched and fragmented—yet remaining coherently recognizable throughout this movie. The music is from a vintage 1920 recording of inventor, visual music pioneer, and symphony piano soloist Mary Hallock-Greenewalt playing Chopin’s Nocturne in G Major.

story © Michael Betancourt | published October 9, 2013 | permalink |  |  

This movie follows the development of a revelatory experience from a 'parting of the veil' into the emergence of a new landscape where the 'distractions of physicality' are replaced by the 'numinous encounter' and beyond.

story © Michael Betancourt | published September 11, 2013 | permalink |  |  

OtherZine 25 has my article on making Dancing Glitch where I discuss how recognizing glitches depends on the audience, not what was done to/in making the work.