"A film that instead of making sense is sense."

March 8, 2014 7:23 PM

Jamestown Baloos (1957) [SLYT] by Robert Breer [PDF] (previously) "is a frenetic, three-part stop-motion animation that features an army of everyday forms and figures — geometric shapes, a piece of string, newspaper clips, a pin-up girl, even Napoleon Bonaparte — flashing across the screen. Placed in increasingly compromised situations and choreographed to a jingoistic tune, the figures essentially become puppets of their former selves. Such unrelenting visuals recall not only Fernand Léger’s early experimental film, Ballet Mécanique (1924), as Breer himself has mentioned, but also early twentieth-century Dadaist collage. Dada artists like Kurt Schwitters and Hannah Höch created witty, unapologetic works that reflected the chaos and violence of modern existence. Jamestown Baloos serves, as their works did, as a pointed indictment on the absurdity of war."
posted by Room 641-A (2 comments total)

Made before digital imaging and editing tools, when one had to commit to this kind of work. Thanks for this.
posted by Rykey at 8:05 PM on March 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

wild
posted by Monkeymoo at 12:26 PM on March 9, 2014