Expanded Cinema

Messiaen on birdsong (late 1960s?)




Composer Olivier Messiaen, whose compositions in the late 1950s and early 1960s often incorporated elements of birdsong, describes and mimes the nightingale’s song, as his second wife, pianist Yvonne Loriod, plays his own transcription on the piano.

What's in the brain (1979)



Founded in Vienna in 1978 by artists Peter Weibel and Loys Egg, Hotel Morphila Orchester plays "What's in the brain", based on William Shakespeare's Sonnet 108, in this Austrian television broadcast from 1979.

Saugus Series (1974)





Seven short 16mm vignettes, made up of meticulously assembled still lives, and displaying O'Neill's masterful use of optical printing.

Interview With A Cat (1970)
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Recorded at the Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, Düsseldorf, 1970

Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999)



Using footage of discos, northern soul nights, and raves across Britain in the 70s, 80s and 90s, Leckey's film explores the ongoing subculture, and iconography, of nightlife, leisure, and consumption.

Schlingen Blaengen (2008)



Composer, and trained cantor, Charlemagne Palestine performs on the organ of the Lisbon Cathedral earlier this year.

On the Edge (1992)



In this excerpt from the four-part, 55 minute film “On the Edge”, originally aired on Channel 4 TV in the UK in 1992, the late Derek Bailey, who wrote the series, talks about his views on improvised music, interspersed with clips of his wildly discontinuous yet fluidly creative playing---marked by the use of brevity, relentless invention, and wide melodic intervals.

Bailey’s obit from the Guardian.

Sentimental Punk (1979)



"It was in San Francisco at a punk festival. I was already high and the air was so thick in the rooms that you could cut it with a knife. I had a photograph camera with me; I stood in a corner of the entrance hall and took 36 pictures on slide film. At home I put the slides into a slide projector. I took out the lens and filmed the slides by filming directly from the projector - using single frames according to a certain plan. " Kurt Kren

Four Criteria of Electronic Music, 1972 (Excerpt)



This excerpt from Stockhausen's seminal, near-hypnotic lecture---complete with the composer's deft mimicry---focuses on the production of 'sounds,' and revolves around his central premise that electronic music should make use of sonorities not available to the voice or traditional instrumentation.

Hotel Monterey (1972)

Akerman's early feature, marked by the influence of structuralist film, explores the interior of a cheap New York hotel.

The Interview (1998) (Excerpt)



"In the summer of 1996, we filmed application training courses in which one learns how to apply for a Job. School drop-outs, university graduates, people who have been retrained, the long-term unemployed, recovered drug addicts, and mid-level managers - all of them are supposed to Iearn how to market and sell themselves, a skill to which the term "self management" is applied. The self is perhaps nothing more than a metaphysical hook from which to hang a social identity. It was Kafka who Iikened being accepted for a job to entering the Kingdom of Heaven; the paths leading to both are completely uncertain. Today one speaks of getting a job with the greatest obsequiousness, but without any grand expectations." Harun Farocki

Rote Sonne (1969)

Emile Cohl
Fantasmagoria (1908)



Emile Cohl's charming and surreal film, comprised of over 700 drawings, is considered the first fully animated film ever made.

From Stones and flies: Richard Long in the Sahara by Philip Haas (1988)



British artist Richard Long draws rivers of the world in the deserts of North Africa.