Ballet mécanique is een film over beweging en snelheid. De menselijke activiteiten lijken er gereduceerd tot louter musculaire bewegingen. Shots van op en neer gaande zuigers, stangen van machines en snel ronddraaiend keukengerei worden afgewisseld met beelden van mensen op een glijbaan en van andere kermisattracties, van openende en sluitende ogen. Een vrouw wiegt op een schommel (Katherine Murphy), de beweging van de schommel wordt voortgezet door bewegende voorwerpen in close-up. De film begint en eindigt met een kubistische uitvoering van Chaplin, een geanimeerde marionet die bestaat uit hoekige elementen. Tussen de delen zitten verbindende elementen in de vorm van handgekleurde flitsen van driehoeken, cirkels en vierkanten, meestal gevolgd door korte momenten van rust in de vorm van afbeeldingen van Légers schilderijen. Voorwerpen als een strooien hoedje en keukengerei komen regelmatig terug en worden door hun (herhalende) bewegingen of hun abstracte vormen ontdaan van hun alledaagse betekenis. Ook tekst verliest zijn betekenis in het spel met de zin “On a volé un collier de perles de cinq millions”. De nullen van 5.000.000 worden abstracte vormen die los van hun context een eigen “ballet” opvoeren. Léger zocht naar het pure filmbeeld en de filmische beweging, ontdaan van de anekdote en het theatrale. Narrativiteit is onbelangrijk, de film werd zonder een uitgewerkt scenario gerealiseerd.

1924 / 10:24 / FR

A two-minute animated voyage through nature's life cycle, following the trials and tribulations of a humble apple seed. The film was kindly funded by Adobe, produced at Nexus Productions and features a soundtrack by Jape. It was made using a mixture of stop motion papercraft and 2D drawn animation. 2008. Mickeyandjohnny.com

2008 / 02:08 / IRE

The External World is a seriously dark but occasionally funny meditation on the anxieties and fears entrenched in modern life. The film premiered at last year's Venice Film Festival, and is currently playing at various festivals around the globe, but was posted online for the first time recently. The version that O'Reilly has posted is, according to his website, updated with a couple of scenes that didn't feature in the original. The External World was co-written with Vernon Chatman, and features cameo voiceovers from Julian Barratt and Adam Buxton - see if you can spot them! Davidoreilly.com

The absurd logic of the "real character" and the extreme discipline of Disneyland become apparent when a real fan of Disney's Snow White* is banned from entering the park in a Snow White costume. As visitors are encouraged to dress up and a lot of costume-like merchandise is sold at the park, the full costumes are only sold for children. The Disney slogan "Dreams Come True" of course means dreams produced exclusively by Disney. Anything even slightly out of control immediately evokes fear of the real, possibly dark and perverse dreams coming true. The fantasy of the innocent Snow White doing something bad is so obviously real, that the security guards and management refer to it when explaining why the visitor can’t enter the park dressed up as Snow White. *Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” from 1937 is the first full length cel-animated film in history. It is based on the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. Team: Raphaël Siboni, Ahmet Ögüt, Pénélope Gaillard, Anna Savolainen
Supported by rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten and Masa Projesi. Pilvitakala.com

2009 / 09:15 / FIN

Visual artist Charlotte Young pokes a bit of fun at herself with this video of her artist’s statement. Charlotte Young is an artist, writer and comedian who makes things up. She has co-written a book with acclaimed artist and musician Billy Childish, published by the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop. She is a regular contributor to 3:AM Magazine. In 2008 she received the Owen Rowley Award for Art (£600) but did not invest this money wisely and is now receiving benefits. Her video ‘Artist’s Statement’ received over 200,000 hits on youtube within a fortnight of its appearance. It has since been a featured video on Gawker, BoingBoing, Cathedral of Shit, ART FAG CITY and Saatchi Online. Todayimadenothing.wordpress.com

2011 / 01:54 / UK

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Say whatever you want to about the school of painting and design known as "op art"...you've already been beaten to the punch by the vox populi caught on camera by Brian De Palma in 1966. In fact, the majority of the director's documentary account of the opening of the titular Museum of Modern Art exhibit dedicated to perceptual art -- art that, as John Lancaster put it, played with "the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing" -- is given over to commentary from both artists and spectators about the effectiveness of pieces by Bridget Riley, Josef Albers and Alexander Liberman. In their collective view, the work was deemed everything from stunning to nauseating. Or, as one interviewee says during the film: "I don't think it's art."

Collection of Dagley/Bortz, www.abatonbookcompany.com

1965 / 08:05 / USA

David Hockney drawing on iPad in the Louisiana Café 6th of April 2011 for the exhibition David Hockney: Me Draw On iPad. 8 April - 28 August 2011. Louisiana.dk

2011 / 02:11 / UK

In Sollmann, hebben kunstenaar Marcel van Eeden, tien jaar geleden al bekend als tekenblogger, en game-ontwikkelaar Jorrit de Vries een korte, 1-person 3d-mysterygame gemaakt. De hoofdpersoon is vergiftigd en kan langzaamaan niet meer zien, horen en bewegen. Het spel speelt zich af in de Rotterdamse haven tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Belangrijke objecten kwamen eerder in tekeningen voorbij in Van Eedens enorme oeuvre. De game vertaalt zijn potloodtekeningen naar een duistere 3d-gamewereld.

2011 / 05:13 / NL

Using pioneering animation techniques to create a look never seen on film before, this 10-minute award-winning film tells the true legend of history's most challenging cipher. Professor White, cryptographer extraordinaire, is on the trail of the notoriously uncrackable Thomas Beale cipher—a century-old riddle hiding the location of a fortune in gold that has tormented its pursuers since inception. But White is not alone—shadowy forces are tight on his tail.
The film contains 16 hidden messages that hold clues to the characters' secrets. Eight are fairly easy and require only a close eye. Six are moderately difficult using various encryption methods. Two are extremely difficult and will require a genius mind to decrypt. Thomasbealecipher.com

2010 / 10:16 / USA

Yayoi Kusama (born March 22, 1929) is a Japanese artist and writer. Throughout her career she has worked in a wide variety of mediums, including painting, collage, sculpture, performance art and environmental installations, most of which exhibit her thematic interest in psychadelic colors, repetition and pattern. Born in Matsumoto, Nagano into an upper middle class family, Kusama started creating art at an early age, going on to study Nihonga painting in Kyoto in 1948. Frustrated with this distinctly Japanese style, she became interested in the European and American avant-garde, staging several solo exhibitions of her paintings in Matsumoto and Tokyo during the 1950s. In 1957 she moved to the United States, settling down in New York City where she produced a series of paintings influenced by the abstract expressionist movement. Switching to sculpture and installation as her primary mediums, Kusama became a fixture of the New York avant-garde, having her works exhibited alongside the likes of Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and George Segal during the early 1960s, where she was often associated with the pop art movement. Embracing the rise of the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s, Kusama came to public attention after she organized a series of Body Festivals in which naked participants were painted with brightly colored polka dots.
In 1973, Kusama moved back to her native Japan, where she found the art scene far more conservative than that in New York. Becoming an art dealer, her business folded after several years, and after experiencing psychiatric problems, in 1977 she voluntarily admitted herself to a hospital, where she has spent the rest of her life. From here, she continued to produce artworks in a variety of mediums, as well as launching a literary career by publishing several novels, a poetry collection and an autobiography. Kusama's work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. Kusama is also a published novelist and poet, and has created notable work in film and fashion design. Major retrospectives of her work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art and Tate Modern, whilst in 2008 Christies New York sold a work by her for $5.1 million, a record for a living female artist.

2008 / 03:00 / JP

Sword & Sworcery EP is an adventure game for the iPad. Set off on a mystical quest through two worlds, one of dream and one of reality, as you attempt to assemble three pieces of a mystical trigon. Swordandsworcery.com

2010 / 02:50 / D

Een korte reeks ‘accidentele’ filmpjes. (2000) Lucky shots as art..

2000 / 02:00 / USA

Op 25 oktober 1977 werd Mathilde Willink dood aangetroffen op bed in haar appartement in Amsterdam. Het betekende het abrupte einde van een leven dat zich kenmerkte door extravagantie en publieke belangstelling. Geboren in Zeeland in 1938, werd Mathilda de Doelder bekend door haar relatie met de Nederlandse magisch-realistische schilder Carel Willink. Na hun huwelijk in 1967 ontstond een bijzondere relatie tussen de twee. Hij noemde haar een superpoes, een mooi ding om in huis te hebben. Aanvankelijk onderhield Mathilde de schilder door als stewardess te werken bij de KLM. Later werd Mathilde, excentriek gekleed door de Nederlandse modeontwerpster Fong Leng, een mediafenomeen die zodoende de doeken van haar man beter deed verkopen. In 1975 zette Willink haar bruusk aan de kant, onder meer nadat zij een portret van zijn tweede vrouw uit 1952 zwaar heeft beschadigd en hij haar duidelijk heeft gemaakt een nieuwe liefde te hebben ontmoet, Sylvia. Mathilde zocht haar heil bij de Nederlandse kunstenaar Anton Heyboer en trachtte door te dringen tot de entourage van Salvador Dali. Uiteindelijk begon ze een relatie met drugsdealer Dicky Vittali en de luxe keerde terug in haar leven. Maar in een sfeer van dreigementen en intimidaties van concurrerende drugsmaffia vindt ze uiteindelijk de dood. Diverse tijdsgenoten en intimi geven hun visie en mening over leven en dood van Mathilde. Filmmaker Jasmina Fekovic lardeert de interviews en mooie archiefbeelden met muziek die Mathilde lijkt toe te zingen.

2002 / 05:00 / NL

In Russia, May 9 is Victory Day, a national holiday. It’s also the birthday of Dave Gahan, lead singer with Depeche Mode, and a group of Muscovite fans have declared it Dave Day, gathering together to celebrate the group with homemade banners, mass sing-alongs and club nights. In Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union, the band’s music has been treasured since it was only available on illegal bootlegged cassettes in the 1980s, and it formed the soundtrack of the march toward freedom those countries embarked upon following the fall of the Berlin Wall. This situation is mirrored in Tehran, where fans take huge risks in listening to their music in a country that has banned all Western music since the Islamic Revolution. In the UK, the church of St Edward King and Martyr in Cambridge holds services for goths where they play Depeche Mode records. Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller and filmmaker Nicholas Abrahams tell these and other stories of faith and devotion from around the world in this fascinating and inspired documentary about fandom, which is at turns bizarre, funny, sad and often touching. Theposterscamefromthewalls.com

2009 / 02:30 / UK

Animatie –with attitude!- van de London-based Evgenia Barinova voor YCN. Domesticetch.com/2012/01/evgenia-barinova.html

2009 / 01:30 / UK

From February 17 till 20, 1971, Ludo Mich organized a Saturn themed Fluxus Festival in the chapel of De Zwarte Panter gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. On the fluorescent invitations shaped like a planet with rings, the Antwerp performer, musician, artist and underground filmmaker announced these four days as "Interplanetary Experiences". The happening included assemblies, performances, sculptures, improvised music, experimental films (including the premiere of Saturn) and a space theater play with grunting piglets unleashed upon the visitors.

1967 & 1971 / 06:30 / BE

Jeff Keen's filmmaking activities have been dominated by random factors from the start. His initial involvement grew from an association with a Brighton art college film society, which acquired 8mm equipment: 'I was almost like a film factory...I was just turning out movies to justify the existence of the film society.' His earliest extant film, the second version of 'Wail' survives only in an out of focus 8mm dupe and an even more visually bizarre 16mm blow-up taken from it. By 1965 he had made a twin screen 8mm movie 'The Pink Auto' that by its very nature can never be shown identically twice. In 1967 overcoming a reluctance to unite one particular image track with one particular soundtrack in perpetuity, he added sound to his first 16mm film Marvo. Kinoblatz.com

2008 / 02:11 / UK