 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(December 2018) |
| Rabbit's Moon | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Kenneth Anger |
| Starring | Claude Revenant André Soubeyran Nadine Valence |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 16 minutes (1971) / 7 minutes (1979) |
| Country | United States |
Rabbit's Moon is an avant-garde short film by American filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Filmed in 1950, Rabbit's Moon was not completed (nor did it see release) until 1971.
Filmed under a blue filter and set within a wooded glade during the night, the plot revolves around a clown, Pierrot, his longing for the Moon (in which lives a rabbit, according to both East Asian folklore and Aztec mythology), and his futile attempts to jump up and catch it. Subsequently, another clown (Harlequin) appears and teases Pierrot, showing him Columbina, with whom he appears to fall in love.
The sets were borrowed from French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville. [1]
The 1971 version of Rabbit's Moon features a soundtrack consisting of 1950s and '60s pop: "There's a Moon Out Tonight" by The Capris, "Oh, What a Night" by The Dells, "Bye Bye Baby" by Mary Wells, "I Only Have Eyes For You" by The Flamingos and "Tears On My Pillow" by The El Dorados. The 1979 version features only a loop of A Raincoat's "It Came In The Night" as its soundtrack.
Pierrot, a stock character of pantomime and commedia dell'arte, has his origins in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne. The name is a diminutive of Pierre (Peter), using the suffix -ot and derives from the Italian Pedrolino. His character in contemporary popular culture—in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall—is that of the sad clown, often pining for love of Columbine. Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons. Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim and, more rarely, with a conical shape like a dunce's cap.
The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra is a 1928 American silent experimental short film co-written and co-directed by Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapić. Considered a landmark of American avant-garde cinema, it tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood with dreams of becoming a star; he fails and becomes dehumanized, with studio executives reducing him to the role of an extra and writing the number "9413" on his forehead.
Shadows is a 1959 American independent drama film directed by John Cassavetes about race relations during the Beat Generation years in New York City. The film stars Ben Carruthers, Lelia Goldoni, and Hugh Hurd as three black siblings, though only one of them is dark-skinned enough to be considered African American. The film was initially shot in 1957 and shown in 1958, but a poor reception prompted Cassavetes to rework it in 1959. Promoted as a completely improvisational film, it was intensively rehearsed in 1957, and in 1959 it was fully scripted.
Kenneth Anger was an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and writer. Working exclusively in short films, he produced almost 40 works beginning in 1937, nine of which have been grouped together as the "Magick Lantern Cycle". Anger's films variously merge surrealism with homoeroticism and the occult, and have been described as containing "elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama, and spectacle". He has been called "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers", with several films released before homosexuality was legalized in the U.S. Anger also explored occult themes in many of his films; he was fascinated by the English occultist Aleister Crowley and an adherent of Thelema, the religion Crowley founded.
The New Hollywood, Hollywood Renaissance, American New Wave, or New American Cinema, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of filmmakers came to prominence. They influenced the types of film produced, their production and marketing, and the way major studios approached filmmaking. In New Hollywood films, the film director, rather than the studio, took on a key authorial role.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is a 38-minute avant-garde short film by Kenneth Anger. It was filmed in December 1953 and completed in 1954. Anger created two other versions of this film in 1966 and the late 1970s. According to him, the film takes the name "pleasure dome" from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's atmospheric 1816 poem Kubla Khan. Anger was inspired to make the film after attending a Halloween party called "Come as your Madness" hosted by artist Renate Druks. The film has gained cult film status.
Nostalgia, styled (nostalgia), is a 1971 American experimental film by artist Hollis Frampton. It is part of his Hapax Legomena series.
Paracinema is an academic term to refer to a wide variety of film genres out of the mainstream, bearing the same relationship to 'legitimate' film as paraliterature like comic books and pulp fiction bears to literature.
Structural film was an avant-garde experimental film movement prominent in the United States in the 1960s. A related movement developed in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.
Peter Thomas was a German composer and arranger with an active career of more than 50 years. He was known for his TV and film soundtracks such as Raumpatrouille, the Edgar Wallace movies film series, and the Jerry Cotton film series.
Stephen Dwoskin was a major avant-garde filmmaker whose work was closely connected to the 'gaze theory' associated with Laura Mulvey; a significant disabled filmmaker – though he rejected being framed as such – and an activist for an alternative film culture, through such organizations as the London Film-Makers' Co-op and The Other Cinema. His films are held by the BFI and distributed by LUX. His archive is held at The University of Reading.
Scott Bartlett was one of the premiere abstract/experimental cinematic artists of the late 1960s and the 1970s. His acclaimed works, such as Off/On and Moon 1969, were greatly admired by many movie directors, including Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. His notable abstract movies and visual avant-garde motion pictures includes Serpent, Medina, Metanomen, Lovemaking, and the poignant interior documentary 1970. His 1967-1972 experiment OffOn, shot on 16mm, was groundbreaking for its use of new video imagery technologies.
Pierrot lunaire: rondels bergamasques is a cycle of fifty poems published in 1884 by the Belgian poet Albert Giraud, who is usually associated with the Symbolist Movement. The protagonist of the cycle is Pierrot, the comic servant of the Italian Commedia dell'Arte and, later, of Parisian boulevard pantomime. The early 19th-century Romantics, Théophile Gautier most notably, had been drawn to the figure by his Chaplinesque pluckiness and pathos, and by the end of the century, especially in the hands of the Symbolists and Decadents, Pierrot had evolved into an alter-ego of the artist, particularly of the so-called poète maudit. He became the subject of numerous compositions, theatrical, literary, musical, and graphic.
Hole in the Moon is a 1964 Israeli avant-garde-satiric movie directed by Uri Zohar.
Jane Conger Belson Shimané (1927–2002) was an American experimental filmmaker.
Venom and Eternity is a 1951 French avant-garde film by Isidore Isou that grew out of the Lettrist movement in Paris. It created a scandal at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival.
Cultural references to Pierrot have been made since the inception of the character in the 17th century. His character in contemporary popular culture — in poetry, fiction, and the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall — is that of the sad clown, often pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Many cultural movements found him amenable to their respective causes: Decadents turned him into a disillusioned foe of idealism; Symbolists saw him as a lonely fellow-sufferer; Modernists converted him into a Whistlerian subject for canvases devoted to form and color and line.
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