Balagan
celebrates Teiji Ito, a visionary
composer, whose scores accompanied numerous Avant-Garde
Films. Besides Maya Deren's "Meshes
in the Afternoon" and "The Very Eye
Of Night" Teiji Ito scored films by Charles
Boultenhouse, Marie Menken, Willard
Maas, Ben Hayeem and others. On January
22nd, 2006, Teiji Ito would have been 81 years
old. He was born to a Samurai family and came
to the United States at the age of six. Ito studied
with master drummer Coyote in Haiti, where he
had gone with Maya Deren in 1955. His keen awareness
of jazz, blues, and flamenco infused his later
music with a spontaneous, improvisational quality.
His knowledge of Buddhism, Voudoun, and Native
American beliefs adds a mystical element to his
work.
Handwritten
(9min, 16mm, 1959)
Director: Charles Boultenhouse
Charles
Boutenhouse writes a poem in the shape of
his hand and delineates the vibrancy of the
creative process while doing so; the hands
on Paleolithic cave paintings to his own hand
to the ultimate painting in the form of a
hand, the echoes and reverberations of the
poetic act of writing are registered. HANDWRITTEN
The most marvelous quality of Boutenhouse's
film is its clarity and direct use of vision.
On one viewing the central image is pellucid.
P. Sitney Adams, Film Culture, No.31
HANDWRITTEN
If one had to name the true avant garde film
in the best spirit of our times underground
aesthetics-- that is, one formally preoccupied
with converting the pad into some coherent
and imaginative film statement solely about
the pad's occupant-- one could do no better
than choose Charles Boutenhouse's HANDWRITTEN.
--Parker Tyler, Underground Film: A Critical
History
Dionysus
(26min, 16mm, 1964)
Director: Charles Boultenhouse
An
experiment to use the devices of the film medium
to intensify the expressitivity of the Greek
myth of Pentheus: cycling hand-held cameras
for intoxication, slow-motion pans for hypnosis,
single frame cutting for dismemberment, multiple
exposures for metamorphosis, etc. A parody of
the embrace from LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD is included
in the Satyr Play.
Charles
Boutenhouse's dionysus... (one of the ) ...
important occasions for the new cinema. --
Jonas Mekas, Movie Journal: The Rise of a
New American Cinema.
...
the film begins with the dancer Louis Falco,
as Dionysus, in thrusting leaps onto which
are superimposed double images of opening
fists:... of flowers opening their fists...
of the athlete of April... of the green leap.
The triple exposure of this first part of
the movie have an extraordinary pictorial
richness. Frequently throughout DIONYSUS the
technique of superimposition of images is
used to achieve some of the most startlingly
beautiful filmic texture I have ever seen
-- Wallace Thurston, Kulchur #16
Marie
Menken
Marie
Menken: "There is no why for my making
films. I just liked the twitters of the machine,
and since it was an extension of painting
for me, I tried it and loved it. In painting
I never liked the staid and static, always
looked for what would change the source of
light and stance, using glitters, glass beads,
luminous paint, so the camera was a natural
for me to try – but how expensive!"
(c. 1966)
Marie
Menken was one of New Yorks outstanding underground
experimental filmmakers of the 50s and 60s.
"Marie was one of the first filmmakers
to improvise with the camera and edit while
shooting. She filmed with her entire body,
her entire nervous system. You can feel Marie
behind every image, how she constructed the
film in tiny pieces and through the movement.
The movement and the rhythm this is what so
many of us seized upon and have developed
further in our own work." - Jonas Mekas
Dwightiana
(4min, 16mm, 1959)
Director: Marie Menken
Score
for steel drum, guitar and flute (Teiji Ito).
"A charming, frivolous animation 'made
to entertain a sick friend.'" -- Cinema
16
Bagatelle
for Willard Maas (5min, 16mm, 1967)
Director: Marie Menken
A
new version of a famous film, made for Menken's
husband - poet and film maker Willard Maas.
The film comprises humour, irony and predictions
- although this will not be very clear to
those who don't know Marie Menken and Willard
Maas.
Arabesque
for Kennedth Anger (4min, 16mm, 1967)
Director: Marie Menken
These
animations of mosaics and Moorish architecture
were made in the form of a thank-you to Kenneth
Anger, who helped her while she shot a film
in Spain. Shot in one day in the Alhambra.
Moonplay
(5min, 16mm, 1967)
Director: Marie Menken
Mary
Menken: 'Game and fantasy that seeks its solace
in pixilation.
Orgia
(12min, 16mm, 1967)
Director: Willard Maas
A fragment of an abandoned, long work concerning
St. Teresa of Avila. A sexual orgy symbolizing
the decadance of modern society. Maas, who
acts in this film, plays the devil while a
wild orgy goes on in his living-room. There
is the fantastic drag queen doing her job
in the bathroom while frenzied love-making,
to the incomparable baroque-jazz music of
Tiji Ito, is carried on in Maas's baroque
apartment. The camera in bird-swift flight
depicts a scene of total decadence as Andy
Warhol's Jackie Kennedy careens through the
air. By way of explanation: the opening scene
shows the director handing out masks to the
actors-the same ones used in LSD WALL by John
Hawkins. The taking of LSD was part of the
original script. --W.M.
Flora
(9min, 16mm, 1959)
Director: Ben Hayeem
"Made,
apparently, by a New York Taxi-driver, this
little jeu d'esprit is reminiscent in style
of Bob Godfrey's films with its fragmentary,
speeded-up techniques and frenzied pace...
entertaining little lark, amusing joke...
Suitability: A" --British Film Institute
