Lost in the Movies: Montage: Two and One (Jacques Rivette & Brian Eno) (video)

Montage: Two and One (Jacques Rivette & Brian Eno) (video)


A new video entry in my montage series, combining movies and music. The previous entry joined two eras of horror (the first two Hellraiser films & Haxan) with duelling guitar solos from a live version of "Sympathy for the Devil." This time I have used clips of Jacques Rivette's films Duelle (1976) and Out 1 (1971) alongside Brian Eno's song "Golden Hours" from 1975.

Update (YouTube upload): 



& the Cinepoem is also available now.



Inspired partly by my recent trip to New York to see the Lynch/Rivette screenings, including Duelle, and partly by my upcoming collaborative video essay on Out 1 (which is scheduled to go up on MUBI in January), this montage came together earlier this afternoon just in time for New Year's Eve. As I selected clips from the films - whose very titles reflect their numerical interest - I decided to focus on shots that had either one or two figures in them. Rivette's work is often about pairs and solitaires so alternating between these modes, in time with the music, made me notice a lot of patterns and echoes in his work.

By coincidence, I've been engaging in a Twitter conversation on the purposes and definitions of video essays, distinguishing between videos created for aesthetic and instructional purposes. I definitely had the former in mind when crafting this piece; even so, I think some educational value snuck in. Certainly it's made me look at Duelle - a film that I didn't like nearly as much as other Rivettes - in a new light, appreciating how it riffs on many themes, images, and motifs (pursuit, engagement, isolation, discovery) in ways similar to and different from Out 1.

Clearly I haven't kept apace with the video schedule I set back in August, but within a week I should be caught up. Although my "Cinepoem" video still hasn't gone up over a month later, I've decided to skip ahead and provide the next entry in my "Montage" series on Vimeo (it will go up on YouTube after I've posted the Cinepoem there, so that I can maintain the order on that channel at least).

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