From: Jay McBride (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Sep 25 2008 - 10:23:12 PDT
New Releases
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Street Date: September 30, 2008
Prebook Date: NOW!
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Monster Road - Collector's Edition·
Prometheus' Garden·
Words for the Dying·
The Collected Films of Takahiko Iimura, No. 1·
Available at microcinemadvd.com
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Monster Road - Collector's Edition
http://www.microcinemadvd.com/product/DVD/856/Monster_Road_Collectors_Editio
n.html
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$US 24.95 SRP/ $24.95 Edu
European List Prices:
24.95?/£16.99
CATALOG # MC-856
UPC: 718122891009
Documentary
2005 · 80 min
Monster Road is a feature length documentary exploring the wildly fantastic
worlds of legendary animator Bruce Bickford. Tracing the origins of
Bickford's iconoclastic worldview, the film journeys back to Bickford's
childhood in a competitive household during the paranoia of the Cold War and
examines his relationship with his father, George, who is facing the onset
of Alzheimer's Disease. Monster Road premiered at the 2004 Slamdance Film
Festival where it won "Best Documentary," eventually screening at over 85
festivals around the world, winning sixteen awards before premiering on
Sundance Channel in June 2005.
Bruce Bickford's collaborations with rock musician Frank Zappa (Baby Snakes,
Dub Room Special, The Amazing Mr. Bickford) in the 1970s made him an
international cult figure. Three decades later, the sixty-one-year-old
animator works alone in a basement studio near Seattle, producing films for
no apparent audience. Enchanted forests, torture chambers, hamburgers that
morph into mythical monsters, and epic battles between giants, fairies, and
anachronistic historical figures populate just a small corner of Bickford's
animated universe. Bruce is the sole caretaker of his father George, a
retired aerospace engineer of the Cold War era who faces the onset of
Alzheimer's disease. George's talents for maximizing the space inside
missiles are mirrored by his son's animations, which often contain dozens of
matchstick-sized figures fighting battles on a set the size of a grapefruit.
George's wondrous musings on the mysteries of the universe reveal a deep
admiration for the implicit architect of such splendor while atheism
prevents him from admitting the possibility of a God. Painfully piercing the
fog of his memories, George considers the suffering of a life spent
disengaged from his family and centered on the imperfections in those around
him.
While the Bickfords lived a normal suburban life by all outward appearances,
the brutality of Bruce's childhood drawings and subsequent animation hints
at a darker underbelly. Questions are raised for which there are no easy
answers. Monster Road untangles myriad personal, artistic, and philosophical
strands from the Bickford's lives to illuminate an intricate web of
influences that fuel Bruce's cinematic visions.
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Prometheus' Garden
http://www.microcinemadvd.com/product/DVD/857/Prometheus_Garden.html
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$US 24.95 SRP/Edu
European List Prices:
24.95?/£16.99
CATALOG # MC-857
UPC: 718122891108
Animation
2008 · 58 min
Best known for his collaborations with rock iconoclast Frank Zappa in the
1970s (Dub Room Special, Baby Snakes, The Amazing Mr. Bickford), underground
animator Bruce Bickford has influenced generations of artists with his
startlingly original vision. Prometheus' Garden (28 minutes, 1988) is the
only film over which Bickford maintained complete creative control.
Inspired by the Greek myth of Prometheus, a Titan who created the first
mortals from clay and stole fire from the gods, Prometheus' Garden immerses
viewers in a cinematic universe unlike any other. The dark and magical
images of this haunting film unfold in a dreamlike stream of consciousness
revealing an unlikely cast of clay characters engaged in a violent struggle
for survival. Like all Bickford films, Prometheus' Garden defies description
and simply must be experienced.
In Clay Animation, film scholar Michael Frierson writes: "Bickford offers us
a visionary landscape, a hallucinogenic retreat into magical settings where
figure and ground may transform into the other at any moment, enchanted
settings in which modern technocrats are easy villains and nature is under
siege." Bickford is an underground artist who has mystified animation
critics and inspired generations of animators, while somehow eluding fame.
He has been described as the world's only "outsider artist" working in the
medium of animation. He has been recognized as a "genius" by Frank Zappa and
countless other iconoclasts. One thing is certain: Bickford is a true
original. In his collaborations with Frank Zappa in the 1970s, Bickford
relinquished creative control of his work (which was edited and scored by
Zappa). Consequently, Prometheus'
Garden is Bickford's most comprehensive and least compromised vision.
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Words for the Dying
http://www.microcinemadvd.com/product/DVD/845/Words_for_the_Dying.html
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$US 24.95 SRP/Edu
European List Prices:?
24.95 / £16.99
CATALOG # MC-845
UPC: 880198084590
Documentary
1990 · 81 min
Featuring Brian Eno & John Cale
A revealing cinema verité portrait of the former Velvet Underground
musician, John Cale, in creative collaboration with Brian Eno. Director Rob
Nilsson follows them to Moscow, London and Wales for the recording of a new
album, "Words for the Dying", built around four Dylan Thomas poems. This is
not your typical "making of" documentary. Once in Moscow, Nilsson discovered
that Eno wanted no part of the filming. The film becomes a clash of wills as
Nilsson tries to cajole Eno back into the project. It is a subtle
internecine battle, the camera crew tiptoeing through a minefield of
bursting egos.
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Takahiko Iimaru
http://www.microcinemadvd.com/generic/takahiko/keyword/?searchStr=takahiko
<http://www.microcinemadvd.com/generic/takahiko/keyword/?searchStr=takahiko&
fixthis.x=0&fixthis.y=0&fixthis=Search>
&fixthis.x=0&fixthis.y=0&fixthis=Search
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$US 29.99/75.00 SRP/Edu
European List Prices:?
29.99 / £19.99
CATALOG # MC-847
UPC: 880198084798
Experimental
2009 · 71 min
Takahiko Iimura is considered one of the most influential and important
experimental filmmakers of our time. In an era of the explosion of
Underground Film in the States, Iimura, almost alone in Tokyo, began making
experimental film just reading the news from abroad without actually seeing
them. His work explores wide range of experiments from poetic cinema with
Dadaist and Surrealist influence and Absurdist filmic play in the 1960's
through more formal and conceptual investigations in the 1970's and the
later. He is also a widely established international artist, having numerous
exhibitions including installation and performance in Japan, the USA, and
Europe. One of his early films, "Onan", which is the starter of this
collection, was awarded Special Prize at the legendary Brussels
International Experimental Film Festival, l964. This compilation assembles
mainly his early stage of the 1960s except "AIUEONN Six Features"(1993).
Films Included:
Onan(1963, 7min.) Winner of Special Prize at legendary Brussels
International Experimental Film Festival, 1964. A surreal short tale of a
young guy bears a big egg after masturbation...
White Calligraphy (1967, 11min) is a film featuring calligraphy scratched
directly on black film one character in every frame taken from the famous
story of Kojiki, written in 8th Century. When projected, it is too fast to
read, but seen as an abstract line animation film. It is an almost like
autonomous writing of surrealist, lines rapidly explode like firework
AIUEONN Six Features(1993, 7min.) plays on computerized funny faces with
Japanese vowels which don't synchronize with the voice except the first
time. Repeated delay between the voice and the mouth may actualize the
theory of "Differance" with "a"
by Jacques Derrida combining "difference" and "delay."
Face(1968-69, 17min.) is featuring Warhol's super stars, Mario Montez, and
underground comic star of the Kuchar brothers', Donna Kerness, in their
sexual process on faces in acting mixed with the "real" one in close-ups
questions the difference between what is "real" and what is "fake" in film.
Continuous laughing voice over the images makes one wonder as an absurd
play.
Filmmakers (1969, 28min.) documents in a very personal manner the portraits
of the most active experimental filmmakers in the mid 1960's: Stan Brakhage,
Stan Vanderbeek, Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, and Takahiko Iimura.
It is a rare historical document of the "Golden Age" of underground film.
The film also characterizes the shooting method to each filmmaker as
partially uses their style of filming in their parts. The sound counteracts
the shooting style as Iimura himself records the voice in words what he sees
in the picture objectifying the voice over the image.
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Microcinema International
DVD - Over 500 International Titles
* Art and artist documentaries
* Animation
* Social/Political
* Short film and video compilations by award winning directors
* Ambient DVDs created for plasma TVs
* Fashion, typography, and motion design
* Family films
* Much more!
SEE OUR ONLINE CATALOG:
microcinemadvd.com
For wholesale orders: +1-415-447-9750, FAX: +1-509-351-1530,
email suppressed Billing in USD, GBP, or EUR
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.