Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus (Dalibor Barić, 2020)

 ☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼(☼) out of 10☼

Every encounter with the work of Croatian 'cinexperimenter' Dalibor Barić feels like a wordless conversation or rather, telepathic connection with some obscure entity that frequently changes the shape of its embodiment, ever-intensifying its inscrutability. Full of surprises, whether aesthetic or (anti)narrative, he tends to plunge you into a whole new world of endless (im)possibilities, and leave you there to explore it to your heart's content. The same applies to his feature debut whose deliriously puzzling title suggests vivid and exuberant imagination at work.

Part cosmogonic neo-noir, and part metafictional tone poem subtly underscored with political/anti-capitalist subtext, Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus (hereinafter, ALTWR) can also be labeled as a deeply personal and sublimely absurd meditation on the nature of cinema, self and our place in the universe disguised as a fragmented, heavily deconstructed detective story. Following a couple of revolutionaries, Sara and Martin, as well as an inspector on their trail, the film is set in a grim dystopian society from a conspiracy theorist's worst nightmare. Structured as a 'box within a box within a box' (ad infinitum), it stubbornly refuses to divulge any answers, leaving the viewer - hypnotized and disoriented - in an inescapable labyrinth, and that's exactly where one of its alluring fortes lies. However, not all is doom and gloom (and poeto-philosophical discourse), because Barić owns a wry sense of humor that provides a few moments of relief from the mind-boggling questioning of colliding, and decomposing realities.

The sensation of watching ALTWR is best described in the language of the author's previous offerings - imagine being an amnesiac on the beach that only exists in the darkest recesses of one's brooding mind, or astronaut of featherweight faced with unknown energies and unidentified emotions, and you may get an idea of what to expect from its oneness of space and time immersed in the subconsciousness. A daring, wildly eclectic and incredibly creative amalgam of rotoscopy, collage animation and found footage, the film's eye-popping visual identity is about as idiosyncratic as it gets - like a Dada artist conjured a Godardian flick drenched in the ectoplasm of Stacey Steers's or Irena Evteeva's fantasies and Pynchonian speculations. And what makes it even more fascinating is the fact that Barić made it virtually all - including the intriguing soundtrack - by himself, assisted only by Dino Brazzoduro in the sound design department, Ivan Katić as a producer for Kaos, and several actors lending their voices to deliberately 'defaced' characters, in a stark radio-drama fashion. The diversity of shapes, colors and textures is so overwhelming that you have no choice but to let them wash over you, especially when they transform into elusive, psychedelic abstractions. A piece of huge alchemical potency, ALTWR is one of this year's most stunning experiments. 

(The review is based on the screener provided by the author.)

Top 20 Classic Premieres of 2020

This year, more than sixty 20th century features that I watched for the first time left a strong impression on me, but for my top 20, I deliberately omitted well-known titles and widely recognizable filmmakers that you’re likely to find on the lists such as ‘1001 Films You Must See Before You Die’. The titles are arranged from the 20th to the 1st position.

20. Oxygen (Matjaž Klopčić, 1970)

19. Velnio nuotaka / Devil's Bride (Arūnas Žebriūnas, 1974)

18. El detective y la muerte / The Detective and Death (Gonzalo Suárez, 1994)

17. La notte brava / The Big Night (Mauro Bolognini, 1959)

16. Palac / The Palace (Tadeusz Junak, 1980)

15. Anaphase (Levi Zini, 1996)

14. The Mask (Julian Roffman, 1961)

13. Сказка странствий (Александр Митта, 1983) / The Story of Voyages (Alexander Mitta, 1983)

12. The Damned (Joseph Losey, 1962)

11. Nukkekauppias ja kaunis Lilith / The Doll Merchant (Jack Witikka, 1955)

10. The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (Joseph Stephano, 1964)

9. Medea (Frans Zwartjes, 1982)

8. Pożegnanie jesieni / Farewell to Autumn (Mariusz Treliński, 1990)

7. The Scenic Route (Mark Rappaport, 1978)

6. Die Tote von Beverly Hills / Dead Woman from Beverly Hills (Michael Pfleghar, 1964)

5. Iran saray-e man ast / Iran, My Land (Parviz Kimiavi, 1999)

4. Gza shinisaken / The Way Home (Aleqsandre Rekhviashvili, 1981)

3. Devojka / The Girl (Puriša Đorđević, 1965)

2. Kladivo na čarodějnice / Witchhammer (Otakar Vávra, 1970)

1. Anchoress (Chris Newby, 1993)

Weird Weird Movie Kids Do Not Watch The Movie (Maximilan Le Cain & Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2013)

There are at least three ways to interpret the second collaborative effort of Maximilian Le Cain and Rouzbeh Rashidi. Split in two distinct parts of approximately the same length, their film may appear like a twisted de(con)struction of the Pygmalion and Galatea myth told in reverse, translated to modern times, and adorned with a wry or rather, wicked sense of humor. It can also be viewed as a clash between a man’s conscious and subconscious mind, the former being dominated by (pure) feminine energy, and the latter ruled by (violent) masculine urges (or maybe it’s vice versa?). According to the official synopsis, it chronicles two ‘narratives’ set in parallel dimensions and linked by a seaside residence in which a woman (Eadaoin O’Donoghue) “dissolves her identity into the ghostly resonances”, whereas a man (Rouzbeh Rashidi) “pursues a bizarre and perverse amorous obsession” (code: mannequin).

Regardless of the perspective one takes, the physical space remains a constant – the third character of sorts that shapes and commands the claustrophobic atmosphere, and simultaneously opens its doors and windows to a multitude of possibilities. Imbued with mystery, and often implying some ominous presence (not unlike a David Lynch’s film), the house interior keeps the cinematic air at its thickest, leaving the exterior exposed to a potential illusion-shattering assault. But even those few instances of the “outside world” undermining the film’s uncanny reality paradoxically strengthen the illusion, acting as whims rather than cracks in the 4th wall, the main reason thereof being a strong connection between both authors’ life and creative work.

Speaking of their creativity, Le Cain and Rashidi employ everything from unexpected superimpositions to hypnotic flickering to unsettling juxtapositions to black, white and blue screen intermissions in the process of image-conjuring, and as a result, they elicit a mixture of fascination and puzzlement from the viewer. Draped in a heavy sonic tapestry of moody drones, murky murmurs and unnerving humming, their visuals are, in equal measures, richly textured, almost material, and ghostly ethereal, relentless in their elusiveness. These “grainy apparitions” beautifully capture the woman’s ennui and fluctuating mental states, as well as the man’s impossible romance and simmering frustration stemming from it, yet all the while, they manage to preserve the status of self-sufficient systems...

Kinoskop Spinoff Vol. 2: Alchemy & Performance

The idea behind Kinoskop spinoff is to promote publicly available celluloid films after the end of the festival season. As the title suggests, its second edition focuses on the alchemical and performative properties of experimental cinema, bringing together six shorts released during the last decade. The first in line is Chris O’Neill’s delightful one-taker Me the Seagull and the Sky which reflects on a moment of oneness with the world through a borderline-hypnotic monologue delivered in a brilliantly deadpan manner (and with an irresistible Irish accent) by Naoimh Looney.

Flickering the viewer away into another, ‘structuralist film’ reality is Homo Sapiens Project (161-170) by the prolific filmmaker and founder of Experimental Film Society Rouzbeh Rashidi who transmutes a couple of Hollywood trailers – for Brian de Palma’s thriller Black Dahlia and 2008 remake of The Day When the Earth Stood Still – into a cryptic ‘cine-entity’ akin to an imposing and foreboding alien transmission.

Edge of Alchemy by American artist Stacey Steers rips open the portal to a whole new dimension where Mary Pickford and Janet Gaynor find themselves as protagonists of a stunningly beautiful and somewhat disconcerting phantasmagoria brought to life by virtue of the imaginatively employed found footage and collage animation. This externalization of women’s innerscapes boasts not only the eye-pleasing visuals, but also a hauntingly immersive score composed by the Quay brothers’ frequent collaborator Lech Jankowski.

Remaining in a fantasy realms, we are taken into a hidden Arcadian grove inhabited by mythic creatures living in harmony with nature. A creek, the Moon and an oak tree whisper ancient secrets of two humans, but one artist Daniel & Clara whose spiritually uplifting Super 8 wonder Espectros Da Terra had the Belgrade premiere at the inaugural edition of Kinoskop in 2019.

Ieva Balode of Baltic Analog Lab proposes ‘cross-cultural, cross-sexual and humanitarian equality’ in her elegant, seductive and socially conscious blend of dance and landscape film Equal Tense that was commissioned by Latvian Centre of Contemporary Art. Draped in a soft, dream catcher-esque sonic veil, her hyper-grainy B&W cinematography is sure to enchant any celluloid cinema aficionado.

Closing the selection is Justin Tyler Close’s poetic exploration of grief, loss and rebirth in The Arrival – a surreal, childlike performance turned healing ritual set in the post-apocalyptic-like ruins of artist Lita Albuquerque’s home studio lost in the Woolsey Fires in 2018. Its inviting imagery and evocative cello-score are perfectly matched in this wordless love letter to everyone affected by climate change.

Click on the titles to watch the films!

Total duration - 54:11

Me the Seagull and the Sky | Chris O’Neill | 2012 | 16mm | 4:21

Homo Sapiens Project (161-170) | Rouzbeh Rashidi | 2013 | 35mm | 8:07

Edge of Alchemy | Stacey Steers | 2017 | 35mm | 19:19

Espectros Da Terra | Daniel & Clara | 2018 | Super 8 | 4:00

Equal Tense | Ieva Balode | 2018 | 16mm | 7:21

The Arrival | Justin Tyler Close | 2019 | 16mm | 11:03

L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties 2 (Jingming Guo, 2020)

 ☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼(☼) out of 10☼

The continuation of L.O.R.D. saga by controversial young adult writer and pop idol turned director Jingming Guo marks a major milestone in the animation industry of mainland China. Striving to take your breath away with state-of-the-art CGI and over-the-top action sequences, Legend of Ravaging Dynasties 2 is a vast improvement in comparison to its predecessor in terms of both visuals and story whose ostensibly esoteric, convoluted nature poses no obstacle in the way of sheer enjoyment.

Drawing inspiration from various, oft-disparate sources, ranging from Chinese and other mythologies, to several centuries of European architecture, to wuxia and Yimou Zhang's historical spectacles, to Giger's and Beksiński's artwork, to Final Fantasy and Fate/Stay Night franchises, this extremely high gothic fantasy is first and foremost a deliciously fancy feast for the eyes. Its infinitely immersive world of wild magic, unbelievably handsome people and soul behemoths is replete with gorgeous medieval cities, sumptuous Versailles-like castles, seemingly inescapable labyrinthine ruins and bottomless oceans that act as portals to rocky wastelands and abandoned temples. And let's not forget a secret lake of blood inhabited by a slimy, Brobdingnagian triton that would give Guillermo del Toro a run for his money. To say that the attention to detail is awe-inspiring would be a severe understatement, because everything from a lacy, transparent nightgown of lovely princess Tianshu You Hua to splashes of water transforming into killer icicles during the final battle is jaw-droppingly gorgeous!

Speaking of battles, L.O.R.D. 2 is densely packed with elaborate, grandiloquent, gravity-defying set pieces of martial arts and swordplay extravaganza reaching almost poetic heights, despite their undeniable similarity to video game cut-scenes (which, by the way, have been increasingly cinematic in recent years). One particularly impressive sequence involves a flock of dragons and some mind-blowing aerial acrobatics accompanied by a pounding rock number followed by an operatic composition that elevates the grandeur of the proceedings. Eclectically epic in scope, the original score by Taku Iwasaki is perfectly matched to dazzling imagery in any given moment, whether the moment requires string-laden melodramatics or modern metal grinding.

As you might've already figured, Guo's film is all style over substance or rather style as substance, given that the narrative and the character development are of secondary importance. At its core, it is a good vs. evil fable with plenty of baroque flourishes which turn it into a larger-than-life adventure of mystical proportions, and with an enigmatic Duke, Gilgamesh, who is sealed in a God-forsaken cavern posing as a plot device. To learn what's so special about him, we will probably have to wait for the third installment promised by the cliffhanger ending...

Kinoskop Spinoff: B&W Celluloid Magic

Welcome to the first Kinoskop spinoff! Presented here is a small, yet eclectic selection of seven B&W films released during the past two decades, and publicly available on their respective authors’ Vimeo channels. Arranged chronologically, it opens with Phillip Barker’s illusionary, perspective-bending mystery drama Regarding that makes brilliant use of a single set, then takes a sharp turn into the absurdist territory with Dmitri Frolov’s punkish, darkly humorous piece The Daddy’s Meat, followed by Brittany Gravely’s esoteric music video Black Tide for avant-garde band Neptune set in the otherworldly realm of non-human. 

The longest of the bunch, Medeafilm by Behrad Gramian and Hailey Benton Gates pays a loving homage to silent cinema, as it subverts the Medea myth into a quirky, psychosexual cine-play. Susu Laroche’s less-than-two-minutes-long action fantasy Tzars of Eros elevates grain and scratches to a whole new level, depicting ‘Apollo and Dionysus at loggerheads’. Karissa Hahn turns the mundane into a recurring nightmare in her performative short Cataract Churning Grey marked by the whistling sound of a boiling teapot. And last but not least is Jared Michael Sobotka’s Anima – a dreamlike exploration of self and soul that was screened as a part of ‘Cine-Rituals in Magic & Alchemy’ program at the inaugural edition of Kinoskop in Belgrade, 2019.

Click on the titles to watch the films!

Total Duration - 37:11

Regarding | Phillip Barker | 2002 | 16mm | 4:50

The Daddy’s Meat | Dmitri Frolov | 2004 | 16mm | 3:36

Neptune – Black Tide | Brittany Gravely | 2008 | 16mm | 4:34

Medeafilm | Behrad Gramian & Hailey Benton Gates | 2010 | 16mm | 11:47

Tzars of Eros | Susu Laroche | 2014 | 16mm | 1:40

Cataract Churning Gray | Karissa Hahn | 2017 | Super 8 | 4:07

Anima | Jared Michael Sobotka | 2019 | 16mm | 6:37

Kinoskop 2 Online

Officially, the second edition of Kinoskop festival has ended, but the spirit of celluloid cinema lives on! In addition to the entire Music Videos selection which was one of this year's novelties, there are ten films publicly available on their respective authors' Vimeo/YouTube/official pages. Just click on the titles to watch them!

Nordic Grammar (Kaspar Peters, 2019) / Audience Award (along with The Man Who Became Everything, 2020, by Michael Alexander Uccello) - a hauntingly beautiful mystery in which interior and exterior spaces become the extension of the heroine's deteriorating state of mind.

My Selves Dissolving (Danielle Wakin, 2020) - meta-existing in a phantasmagorical realm of rambunctious psychedelic abstractions and introspective pseudo-occult rituals charged with glam eroticism, this has to be one of the most bewitching shorts, both aurally and visually, that I've seen this year.

A Body Travels in Darkness (Kyle Ryan, 2020) - if you are a fan of David Lynch's early experiments, don't miss out on this dark, head-scratching piece set in an alternate reality.

Inventory (Joeri De Jongh, 2020) - a tastefully humorous look at one woman's struggle with boredom during the lockdown we've all experienced during this year. (Cat people should know that there's a beautiful feline appearing in a supporting role.)

Espinado (Ivan Cordeiro, 2019) - an uplifting Super 8 documentary on Martin Espino, a composer of indigenous Yaqui and Tepehuano ancestry whose music harkens back to the exotic past...

Roadtrip (Isabel Padilla, 2019) - only two minutes long, this is an absurd, delightfully weird deconstruction of a road-movie happening in the middle of... where?

Crumbs #3 (Cinema Trailer) (Jack Wormell, 2020) - a droll parody of blockbuster trailers, as well as a prickly comment on the hyper-production of landscape films. 

Rainbow in the Dark (Ben Mosca, 2020) - an inspired anti-smoking PSA brimming with mesmerizing apocalyptic imagery.

The Lovers (Justin Brown, 2020) - a meditative romance of ethereal superimpositions which lulls the viewer into a dream state...

Risques (Thomas Gerard, 2020) - a tone poem / essay film / music video depicting inner turmoil, and featuring the strong, magnetic presence of model Rouguy.