‘Too esoteric, even for me,’ said McLaren about his The Flicker Film. The famous animator’s most abstract effort is marginalized to the point of being officially labelled as ‘unfinished,’ even though the explosion of high-intensity stroboscopic imagery created by rapidly alternating black and white frames, coupled to infectious syncopation on the soundtrack – looks and sounds to be not only complete enough, but utterly mind-blowing.
Also in this combined programme
-
New Ratio
An exploration of the move from the 4:3 screen ratio to 16:9, now the standard for broadcast television. A hypnotic and sensory exploration of the… -
The Flicker
By implicating the retina rather than sight, this film displaces the centres of reception from the sensorial to the neural. -
Ray Gun Virus
This is a work in which no images appear yet one can get pure identity on film. The projected film itself makes the viewer aware… -
Archangel
This film presents a series of flickering frames of primary colours to groaning tape manipulations. -
Arnulf Rainer
This is a film composed entirely of solid black and solid white frames, strung together in lengths as long as 24 frames and as short…
Film details
- Country of production
- Canada
- Year
- 1961
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2008
- Length
- 4'
- Medium/Format
- DVD
