“A goddess born from the sea. A white egg that turns black. A serpent man, a spider woman, and a murder. Sanctum and Sacrum opens a portal between the ancient world of myth and symbol and the banal pastels of a Florida apartment. It is a matrix of transformation, in which the lives of two couples intersect via a web made out of ritual, symbol and the ever-present origin of myth.”
“Jacques de Beaufort has created a 67 minute digital poem that continues from where Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Robert Graves left off. He cuts into the cool pastels of the Florida suburbs with the serrated edges of ancient myth and symbol. This film is the first from a multi-media genius, and it presages even greater things to come. He is a talent to watch carefully.” — John David Ebert
“Directed by Victor Halperin (1932)
Starring Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn
After arriving in Haiti to meet her fiance, a blushing bride-to-be is quickly transformed into a pallid, soulless body by creepy voodoo master Lugosi, at the behest of a jealous rival who desires her. Made for $50,000 in 11 days in 1932, this interesting horror film relies more on visuals and atmosphere than dialogue. One of LugosiÂs best films from the classic era of horror.”
“Vladimir Bortko has become the first Russian film director to start shooting of renowned Bulgakov’s novel and not to stop half-way. All the others Russian directors once engaged in the production of Master and Margaret have actually turned out to be unable to finalize their projects. The rumors say, it is due to some mysticism… The Master and Margaret begins with two story lines: the Devil and his retinue show up to make mischief in 1930’s Moscow while Matthew the Evangelist attempts to uncover the truth about Pontius Pilate and the Crucifixion of Jesus in Jerusalem in A. D. 33. Halfway through the novel, Bulgakov unveils a third story line set in Moscow, in which the love-stricken Margarita bargains with the Devil to be reunited with her lover, the Master, a tormented writer-hero who pines away in an insane asylum. Bulgakov gradually weaves the three scenarios together, all the while exercising devilish lampoonery and wit to satirize Soviet life under Stalin. Because public discussions of religion and critiques of the government had long been punishable by a trip to the gulag, the themes addressed in Master and Margaret very rarely surfaced in the Soviet Union: many Soviet citizens read the Gospel story for the first time in Bulgakov’s narrative.” [via]
Werner Herzog talks about the jungle. From Burden of Dreams, about the making of Fitzcarraldo. [HT Erik Davis]
“Nature here is violent, base. I wouldn’t see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and, just, rotting away. Of course there is a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery. The birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing. They just screech in pain.
It’s a unfinished country. It is prehistorical. The only thing that is lacking is the dinosaur, yeah. It is like a curse laying on the entire landscape. And whoever goes too deep into this, has his share of that curse. So, we are cursed with what we are doing here. It’s a land that God, if he exists, has created in anger. It’s the only land where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we, in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication and overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars, the stars appear in the sky, look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But, when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it. I love it. I love it very much. But, I love it against my better judgement.”
This is a trailer for a film night event being held in Los Angeles, CA organized in part by Jacqueline Elaine Gomez, a frequent contributor to the Hermetic Library visual pool, and the person behind The Church of Anthrax and the Tree Altars project.
“MISS M.E. & Jacqueline Elaine Gomez are pleased to have guest curator Astral Eyes present a night of psychedelic sights and sounds.
Astral Eyes has dug up from the depths ov his insane collection, the very rarely seen 1973 Japanese animated feature film, Kanashimi no Belladonna or Belladonna of Sadness.
Directed and co-written by Eiichi Yamamoto inspired by Jules Michelet’s non-fiction book Satanism and Witchcraft, first published in 1862.
A hand painted water color psychedelic explosion!
Its the story of Jeanne, a peasant woman who is raped which leads to her being accused of witchcraft.
This film contains some of the most graphic and suggestively erotic, violent and beautiful psychedelic imagery ever seen.
As if that is not enough, we are pleased to have a special performance by Mira Billotte, WHITE MAGIC. Who will be performing an enchanting set just for this screening.
To keep the night charmed there will be sonic serenades
by DJ’S
DIVA DOMPE
AMANDA ZAZI
GUY (Entrance Band)
FRIDAY
AUGUST 3RD
$7
Doors @ 8:30
WHITE MAGIC performs at 9pm
BELLADONNA to follow
120 N Santa Fe 90012”
“‘The Kenneth Anger Box Set’ is a Fantoma Films release now available through Microcinema DVD. To order this DVD and/or other titles distributed by Microcinema, go to: www.microcinemadvd.com.
Cinematic magician, legendary provocateur, author of the infamous HOLLYWOOD BABYLON books and creator of some of the most striking and beautiful works in the history of film, Kenneth Anger is a singular figure in post-war American culture. A major influence on everything from the films of Martin Scorsese, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and David Lynch to the pop art of Andy Warhol to MTV, Angers work serves as a talisman of universal symbols and personal obsessions, combining myth, artifice and ritual to render cinema with the power of a spell or incantation. This 2-DVD set contains Angers complete Magick Lantern Cycle, from his landmark debut FIREWORKS in 1947 to his breathtaking phantasmagoria LUCIFER RISING in 1981. Fantoma is very proud to present the films of this revolutionary and groundbreaking maverick, painstakingly restored and presented on DVD for the first time in one collection.
Special Features · High definition transfers from newly restored elements · Screen specific audio commentary by Kenneth Anger · Rare outtakes from Rabbits Moon · Anger’s 2002 film The Man We Want To Hang · Restoration Demonstrations · Restored stereo soundtrack for Lucifer Rising, re-mastered from the original session tapes · Additional audio track for Invocation Of My Demon Brother · Booklet with written appreciations of Kenneth Anger by Martin Scorsese, Gus Van Sant, and Guy Maddin, written introduction to Lucifer Rising by Bobby BeauSoleil, notes for each film, rare photos, and more.”
“Baraka is an incredible nonverbal film containing images of 24 countries from 6 continents, created by Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson, with music from Michael Stearns and others. The film has no plot, contains no actors and has no script. Instead, high quality 70mm images show some of the best, and worse, parts of nature and human life. Timelapse is used heavily to show everyday life from a different perspective. Baraka is often considered a spiritual film.” [via]
“It’s not a simple right or wrong. It needs a whole new way of thinking.”
“MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. With breathtaking sequences, such as the opening tracking shot through an almost endless factory, the filmmakers also extend the narratives of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste.
In the spirit of such environmentally enlightening sleeper-hits as AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH and RIVERS AND TIDES, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES powerfully shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it, without simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions.” [via]
“In the movies this confusion is accentuated to the point of dementia. What costumes! What furniture! What ladies! What ballrooms! What clubs! What love scenes! What butlers and footmen! What dinner tables! What debutantes! What boot and slippers! What coiffures! What jewelry! What manners!”
“In the movies this confusion is accentuated to the point of dementia. What costumes! What furniture! What ladies! What ballrooms! What clubs! What love scenes! What butlers and footmen! What dinner tables! What débutantes! What boot and slippers! What coiffures! What jewelry! What manners!” [via]
Anthology Project The benefit anthology project helps promote newer works in the Western Esoteric Tradition to the audience of the Hermetic Library and beyond
