[Frameworks] Robert Breer 1926-2011

[Adam Hyman]

The Filmforum Q&A with Robert Breer from 2008 is on You Tube in 5 parts, at:
Part 1 http://youtu.be/4izIkbAIJeo
Part 2 http://youtu.be/YhmEwupo_NM
Part 3 http://youtu.be/4U0CN9UpUSk
Part 4 http://youtu.be/Cwm3n6JlQ0Q
Part 5 http://youtu.be/itrLEpNsME0

This show was really made possible by Stave Anker, Cal Arts & REDCAT.  Here
are the program notes from that show, so you ca see to what we are
referring.

LOS ANGELES FILMFORUM PRESENTS:
MOVING FIGURES: THE ANIMATED WORLD OF ROBERT BREER ­ PART 3
Films from 1952-1964, and More!
Sunday November 16, 2008, 7:00 pm
Spielberg Theatre at the Egyptian
 
Los Angeles Filmforum is the city's longest-running organization dedicated
to weekly screenings of experimental film, documentaries, video art, and
experimental animation.  www.lafilmforum.org <http://www.lafilmforum.org>

In person: Robert Breer
 
Robert Breer, one of America¹s foremost filmmakers for more than 50 years,
pays a rare visit to Los Angeles to attend a multi-venue celebration of his
work. A close colleague of Rauschenberg, Oldenburg and many other seminal
artists of the ¹50s and ¹60s, Breer brought a comparably imaginative and
rigorous appreciation for collage and pure form to the art of cinema.
Throughout a body of more than 40 animated‹and in ways anti-animated
films‹Breer celebrates cinema as a unique way of seeing, and the act of
drawing as an endlessly expressive and unpredictable personal gesture.
Tonight is the third part of a three-part retrospective organized by Steve
Anker, featuring a selection of the artist¹s early work (1952-1964),
including portraits and collaborations with Jean Tinguely, Claes Oldenberg
and other avant-garde figures of the Œ50s and early ¹60s, as well as his
first major animated and pixilated short films. (Notes by Steve Anker)
 
A founding member of the American avant-garde, Robert Breer (b. 1926) has
been working at the forefront of experimental animation for over fifty
years. The son of an inventor and engineer, Breer's continued
experimentation with a range of film and animation techniques has drawn from
his deep knowledge of early cinema and cinematographic technologies. Breer
is celebrated not only for his remarkable line and live action techniques,
seen in works such as A Man and His Dog Out for Air (1957), but also for
fabulous collage films such as Un Miracle (1954) and his dazzling use of
single-frame photography in break-through films such as Fist Fight (1964)
and the incredible Jamestown Baloos (1957).
 
Breer entered film through painting in the early 1950s when he was living in
Paris and deeply influenced by Neo-plasticism as defined by Mondrian and
Vasarely. Breer channeled his interest in geometric abstraction into his
remarkable first group of films, Form Phases (1954-1956), which explored the
role of movement in the understanding of form and space. Breer's wonderful
kinetic sculptures also tie directly into the concern for movement,
composition and space perception which has remained central to his films.
Combining a meticulous attention to form and rhythm with an acerbic wit and
talent for satire, Breer provides an important link between the abstract
films of Richter, Eggeling and Leger and the lyric and radical traditions of
the avant-garde, from Brakhage and Baillie to Kubelka and Sharits. (Harvard
Film Archive)
 
Special thanks to Steve Anker for organizing this three-part retrospective
and to Andrew Lampert and Anthology Film Archives, who preserved several of
Breer's films in this program.
 
Tonight:
Form Phases I (US 1952, 16mm, silent, color, 2 min.)
Form Phases IV (US 1954, 16mm, silent, color, 4 min.)
Breer's earliest experiments in animation are wonderfully dense yet lyrical
abstractions based on Breer's own geometric paintings.
 
Un Miracle (US 1954, 16mm blow-up to 35mm, silent, color, 1 min.)
Breer's first collage film is a hilarious joke about the juggling talents of
Pope Pius XII, made in collaboration with Pontus Hulten.
 
Recreation (US 1956, 16mm blow-up to 35mm, color, 2 min.)
Featuring a commentary by Noel Burch (in nonsense French), Recreation's
rapid-fire montage of single-frame images of incredible density and
intensity has been compared to contemporary Beat poetry.
 
A Man And His Dog Out for Air (US 1957, 16mm blow-up to 35mm, b/w, 2 min.)
A whimsical film that displays Breer's drawing artistry. Originally shown as
a short before Last Year at Marienbad during that film's initial New York
theatrical release.
 
Jamestown Baloos (US 1957, 16mm blow-up to 35mm, color, 6 min.)
 
Eyewash (US 1959, 16mm blow-up to 35mm, color, silent, 4 min.)
A free flow from photography to geometric abstraction hand-painted by Breer.
 
Blazes (US 1961, 16mm blow-up to 35mm, color, 3 min.)
"One hundred basic images switching positions for four thousand frames. A
continuous explosion." ­ RB
 
Pat's Birthday (US, 1962, 16mm, b&w/so, 13min.)
A day in the country with Claes Oldenburg and the Ray Gun Theatre Players
... includes such classic items as the haunted house, a gas station, ice
cream stand, miniature golf, airplane noises, balloons. Things happen after
each other in this film only because there isn't room for everything at
once. After all, time's not supposed to move in one direction any more than
it does in another.
 
Horse Over Tea Kettle  (1962, 16mm, color, sound, 8 min.)
 
Fist Fight (US 1964, 16mm blow-up to 35mm, color, 9 min.)
Breer's extraordinary autobiographical film combines personal and family
photos with intense colors, textures and geometric abstractions. Originally
presented as part of Karlheinz Stockhausen's 1964 premiere of Originale.
 
Pbl No. 2  (1968, 16mm, color, sound, 1 min.)
A concise one minute cartoon history of the black American commissioned by
Public Broadcast Laboratory and shown in NET network.
 
Gulls & Buoys (1972, 16mm, color/so, 7.5min.)
"In GULLS & BUOYS a large number of Breer's ideas are compressed and
crystallized into a short statement of great richness. It could function
excellently as an introduction to the remarkable range of pleasures
available from the films of Robert Breer." - Scott Hammen, Afterimage
 
What Goes Up (2003, video, 4 min. 30 sec.)
"His most recent film, What Goes Up, cycles through several intervals framed
by the drawn animations of an ascending plane and a variety of images that
offer a succinct summary of the joys of being alive‹photographs of the
artist's family, home and studio, food, drink, the changing leaves, and a
drawing of a voluptuous woman. Breer gives us his personal take on the
everyday in images that zoom past us like a flashback of a thousand
perfectly lived moments rolled into one four-minute epic. The final scene of
a derailed train provides a metaphor for the absurdity of the notion that a
big, beautiful, well-lived life simply runs out."-Carnegie International


Best regards,

Adam
-- 
Adam Hyman
Los Angeles Filmforum
lafilmforum at yahoo.com
adam at lafilmforum.org
http://www.lafilmforum.org



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