The Illiac Passion | |
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Directed by | Gregory Markopoulos |
Based on | Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus |
Release date |
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Running time | 90 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
The Illiac Passion is a 1968 American avant-garde film directed by Gregory Markopoulos.
Jerome Hiler was an assistant on The Illiac Passion, working on costumes and scouting locations. [1] Working titles for the film were Prometheus Bound, Himself as Himself, and Eternity. [2] The soundtrack is based on a recording of Markopoulos reading Henry David Thoreau's translation of Prometheus Bound . [3]
The Illiac Passion premiered at the Film-Maker's Cinematheque in April 1968. [4] The film screened at the fourth Knokke-Le-Zoute Experimental Film Festival in 1967. The festival jury made the controversial decision not to consider The Illiac Passion for any prizes, since Markopoulos had previously won for Twice a Man . [5] A planned 1980 screening at the National Gallery of Athens was cancelled out of concern that the film contained nudity. [6] The Illiac Passion is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection. [7]
Serene Velocity is a 1970 American experimental short film directed by Ernie Gehr. Gehr filmed it in the basement hallway of a Binghamton University academic building, using a static camera position and changing only the focal length of the camera. It is recognized as a key work of structural filmmaking and has been inducted into the U.S. National Film Registry.
Scorpio Rising is a 1963 American experimental short film shot, edited, co-written and directed by Kenneth Anger, and starring Bruce Byron as Scorpio. Loosely structured around a prominent soundtrack of 1960s pop music, it follows a group of bikers preparing for a night out.
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.
Wavelength is a 1967 experimental film by Canadian artist Michael Snow. Considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema, it was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967, and is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney describes as "structural film", calling Snow "the dean of structural filmmakers."
Flaming Creatures is a 1963 American experimental film directed by Jack Smith. The film follows an ensemble of drag performers through several disconnected vignettes, including a lipstick commercial, an orgy, and an earthquake. It was shot on a rooftop on the Lower East Side on a very low budget of only $300, with a soundtrack from Smith's roommate Tony Conrad. It premiered April 29, 1963 at the Bleecker Street Cinema in Greenwich Village.
Gregory J. Markopoulos was a Greek-American experimental filmmaker.
Zorns Lemma is a 1970 American structural experimental film by Hollis Frampton. Originally starting as a series of photographs, the non-narrative film is structured around a 24-letter classical Latin alphabet. It remains, along with Michael Snow's Wavelength and Tony Conrad's The Flicker, one of the best known examples of structural filmmaking.
Cosmic Ray is a 1962 American experimental short film directed by Bruce Conner. With both found footage and original material, it features images of countdown leader, a nude woman dancing, a Mickey Mouse cartoon, and military exercises. It is soundtracked by a performance of Ray Charles's "What'd I Say" and has been recognized by some critics as one of the first music videos.
Free Radicals is a black-and-white animated film short by avant-garde filmmaker Len Lye. Begun in 1958 and completed in 1979, Lye made the film by directly scratching the film stock. The resulting "figures of motion" are set to music by the Baguirmi tribe of Africa.
Massimo Bacigalupo is an experimental filmmaker, scholar, and translator of poetry, essayist and literary critic. He was a founding member of the Cooperative of Independent Filmmakers in Rome. As a filmmaker of the Italian Independent Cinema, he was influenced by the New American Cinema.
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Arnulf Rainer is a 1960 Austrian experimental short film by Peter Kubelka, and one of the earliest flicker films. The film alternates between light or the absence of light and sound or the absence of sound. Since its May 1960 premiere in Vienna, Arnulf Rainer has become known as a fundamental work for structural film. Kubelka released a "negative" version, titled Antiphon, in 2012.
Jerome Hiler is an American experimental filmmaker, painter, and stained glass artist. Having started in New York during the New American Cinema movement, Hiler and his partner Nathaniel Dorsky moved in 1971 to San Francisco, where for many years his work was shown in the context of private salon screenings. He began to publicly screen his films in the late 1990s, releasing new films regularly since 2010. Hiler's work makes use of vivid colors, musical rhythms or structures, and layered superimpositions edited in camera.
The Great Blondino is a 1967 American experimental film directed by Robert Nelson and William T. Wiley.
Anticipation of the Night is a 1958 American avant-garde film directed by Stan Brakhage. It was a breakthrough in the development of the lyrical style Brakhage used in his later films.
Adebar is a 1957 Austrian avant-garde short film directed by Peter Kubelka. It is the first entry in Kubelka's trilogy of metrical films, followed by Schwechater and Arnulf Rainer. Adebar is the first film to be edited entirely according to a mathematical rhythmic strategy.
The Way to Shadow Garden is a 1955 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage.
Blue Moses is a 1962 American experimental film directed by Stan Brakhage, starring Robert Benson.
Twice a Man is a 1963 American avant-garde film directed by Gregory Markopoulos.
Eniaios is a 22-part silent avant-garde film by Gregory Markopoulos, completed in 1991 and released in parts starting in 2004. The film is made from previous released and unreleased films by Markopoulos, arranged into 22 orders totaling 80 hours of footage. An extensive restoration effort on the film began several years after Markopoulos's death in 1992, and as prints of each order have been created, they have been presented in an ongoing premiere, taking place every four years at a remote site near Lyssarea, Greece.