NOT JUST O.J.: 7 Subjects in O.J.: Made in America (video essay)

My first video essay of 2017 is finally available and it took a while to put together. As part of "Oscars on Fandor Month" it celebrates Ezra Edelman's 8-hour documentary O.J.: Made in America, which is nominated for Best Documentary in tonight's ceremony.



In order to analyze this film, I "cheated" and took two different approaches. The two-and-half minute introduction compares Made in America to its coincidental 2016 companion, the dramatized miniseries The People v. O.J. Simpson. Then, I move on to the primary approach: delineating seven subjects the film deals with besides O.J. Simpson, although they all involve him of course.

Here is my introduction to the video:

My Fandor Video Essays Have a New Home

Unfortunately, this past week Fandor Keyframe removed around a thousand video essays from their archive, including ten of my own (my most recent three remain). Yesterday and today I was able to upload all of the missing video essays to my own Vimeo channel. The Fandor videos remain locked in a "private" status, not deleted, so hopefully they will be restored someday. But the following uploads will remain regardless, so please watch, share, and bookmark these from now on (click on the title or the Vimeo insignia on the video to bookmark the source link).

Here are the videos, from newest to oldest. Learning to Look: Eye Contact in Satyajit Ray's THE BIG CITY is probably my favorite of the bunch, but I'm pleased with how all of them turned out.

update: Two of the videos - 6 Years in America and Learning to Look - have been restored to Fandor. Meanwhile, I have also uploaded all of these titles to my personal YouTube channel.

ODE TO BOSTON (video essay on Guy & Madeline on a Park Bench for Fandor Keyframe)

My latest Fandor video essay, like my previous one, is inspired by a new release to look back at an earlier film. In this case, the new release is La La Land, Damien Chazelle's musical love letter to Los Angeles. Watching the trailer, it was clear this movie was screaming from the rooftops that it was an "L.A. Movie" with candy-colored photography of famous locations from the title metropolis. I was most struck by a shot of the Angel's Flight Railway, where the opening scene of my short film Class of 2002 took place. So there was a bit of personal resonance to these clips.

Likewise, when I watched Chazelle's feature debut, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (I keep accidentally typing "Guy and Madeline Go Boating"), I was struck with a bit of geography-inspired nostalgia. But this time it was more subdued and subtle - despite fleeting shots of unmistakable landmarks early on, it actually took me a little while to realize the film was set in Boston. The locale was slightly disguised by the black-and-white imagery and an emphasis on handheld close-ups of the actors. Nonetheless, the city casts a spell over the film, and I decided to draw out that mood even further in my tribute to Guy and Madeline. I created a short musical montage to a city that I - and obviously Chazelle as well - have a great fondness for.

UPDATE: Fandor video no longer available; scroll down to view on other platforms

Here is the accompanying piece I wrote for Fandor:

ODE TO BOSTON In Damien Chazelle's newest film, the young director crafts a musical paean to Los Angeles. It's right there in the title - LA LA LAND (2016) - and is already apparent in the trailer, with its glamorous shots of iconic L.A. locations, and in the synopses of the film, which deals with actors and musicians struggling in the show biz capital. On the other hand, Chazelle's debut feature, GUY AND MADELINE ON A BENCH (2009), is more subtle about its location. The film is composed largely through close-ups of the actors, with black-and-white handheld camerawork cloaking the world of the film in a way that LA LA LAND's widescreen Technicolor palette exposes its own.

And yet Boston (or perhaps Greater Boston, including the surrounding cities) is a distinct character in the movie, its brownstones, monuments, and leafy avenues lending the movie a quiet, pleasant but melancholy atmosphere. New York City makes a brief appearance halfway through, but its fast-paced bustle marks a sharp contrast to the rest of the film. Throughout the film, Chazelle includes fleeting, evocative shots of statues, streets, subways, and skylines that key us in to Boston's unique vibe. Created soon after he graduated from Harvard University, GUY AND MADELINE often feels like Chazelle's love letter to this area, with the New England metropolis a distinct character in its own right.

The film closes with a powerful trumpet solo, shot in a single take, a close-up of the composer/performer playing the instrument as an expression of his love for Madeline. This video essay imagines - perhaps not so outlandishly - that the music is not only a tribute to her, but also to the city in which they fell in, out of, and perhaps back into love. Keeping Guy in a corner of the screen the whole time, I have stitched together a montage of the movie's many quick location shots - juxtaposing these images with a one-minute sample of Guy's sustained solo. This is a distillation of the film's subtle sense of place, and also a way to honor a city I personally have great affection for. Hidden in its corners, glimpsed for a few moments before we return to the actors' faces as our primary touchstone, Boston may still be to GUY AND MADELINE what L.A. is to LA LA LAND - a backdrop without which we can't imagine the central romance.

Uploaded to YouTube in 2018:

For my own personal recollections of Boston, visit my essay Boston, You're My Home, written the day of the Marathon bombing in 2013.

And you can also check out my film Class of 2002, which contains original and found footage from both Boston and Los Angeles:

Nat Turner & Charles Burnett: video essay on Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property

This cross-post was written in October, but delayed until my Favorites series ended yesterday, so that the schedule wouldn't be too cluttered.

It had been a few months since I posted any video essays on Fandor (or anywhere for that matter), but I’m happy to return now with a short video exploring Charles Burnett’s film Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property – obviously very relevant given the recent release of Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation biopic of Turner.

(UPDATE: The Fandor account no longer exists, but the video is uploaded to my own account below...)

(more information & images from the video follow the jump)

Melodrama & minimalism: Au Hasard Balthazar & Pyaasa (video essay for Fandor Keyframe)

I've been pretty busy lately (just not online), and didn't realize that my most recent Fandor video essay had actually gone up back in June. I submitted it a few months ago, inspired partly by having recently rewatched two of my favorite movies, and partly by a minor controversy surrounding Kevin B. Lee's video "Inside the Rooms of NO HOME MOVIE" which altered the soundtrack of clips from a Chantal Akerman film. What difference does sound make in our emotional perception of a scene? What is the common ground between melodramatic and minimalist uses of sound?

I addressed these questions in the above video, as well as in the accompanying text (which you can read in full on Fandor Keyframe (the Fandor video and page no longer exist although this is available on my own channel). Here is the intro to that text:

Mirrors of Kane: Citizen Kane video series, chapter 1: "Meeting Kane" (Introductions)

Earlier in the month, on Orson Welles' 101st birthday, Fandor Keyframe posted "Meeting Kane", the first chapter in my Mirrors of Kane video essay series. (update: Fandor has since made this video private and I have re-located it to my personal channel - see below.) "Meeting Kane" is available on both Vimeo and YouTube (where it has joined a new Mirrors of Kane playlist to keep track of the series). Both are embedded below.

Here is the intro I wrote for Fandor

MIRRORS OF KANE
CHAPTER ONE: MEETING KANE

Today, CITIZEN KANE turns seventy-five. That's five years older than writer/director/star Orson Welles when he passed away, and roughly three years younger than Charles Foster Kane himself when he whispered his final "Rosebud". Like those septuagenarians, the film remains celebrated, but - also like them - it may be misunderstood. The "greatest film of all time" is placed on a lofty pedestal that commands distanced respect and resentment, rather than affection. Even its greatest admirers often emphasize the film's technical achievements and immense influence over any emotional resonance. Most infamously, KANE has been called "a shallow masterpiece" (Pauline Kael) and "a labyrinth without a center" (Jorge Luis Borges) - and much discussion surrounding the movie, however admiring, tends to concur with that judgment.

MIRRORS OF KANE, my first multi-part video series since JOURNEY THROUGH TWIN PEAKS, serves two, related purposes. First, the following chapters will focus in turn on each of the film's five "narrators", the characters who trigger the film's flashback structure. Often dismissed as convenient storytelling devices, these characters actually reveal as much about themselves as Kane. These revelations are both dramatic and stylistic, lending each section of the movie a distinct flavor. Second, using these individuals as touchstones, this series will emphasize the power of the film's relationships, between characters and also between different parts of the film (including CITIZEN KANE's quasi-"ring" composition in which the second half mirrors and reverses the first). Throughout this exploration I will engage with the work of critics with whom I mostly align (Laura Mulvey) and respectfully diverge (Roger Ebert), assembling a chorus of voices as diverse as the film's own.

"Chapter One: Meeting Kane" serves as a concise, playful, and personal introduction to this mission. I pose questions that will be addressed in upcoming chapters, challenge the "cold"/"shallow"/"purely technical" interpretation of the film, and recall my own excited initiation into CITIZEN KANE's world (including its bizarro-world similiarity to Frank Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE). This kicks off not only a series of video essays, with new entries to appear regularly over the next few months, but also, hopefully, a conversation. Where does YOUR view of Citizen Kane fall? How did YOU first discover the movie? What have YOU noticed on repeat viewings? With its panoply of conflicting points of view, maverick approach to filmmaking, and skeptical take on elite institutions, CITIZEN KANE remains a democratic masterpiece, a fact worth celebrating off and onscreen. To take part, visit me on YouTube, Vimeo, or my site Lost in the Movies, where I will be linking to new entries throughout May and June.

To be continued...

Update 2021: chapter two was finally published 

Maya Deren & David Lynch: Spend a "lost afternoon" with my video essay MESHES OF LYNCH for Fandor Keyframe

Every month, I will be offering at least one post on Twin Peaks...up until Showtime re-airs the original series. Then I will post extensive coverage of each episode (mixing new reactions with my many older pieces) immediately after they air. Stay tuned.

If I had to pick a favorite among my recent outpouring of video essays, this would probably be it. Requiring a lot of organization, contemplation, and experimentation, my non-narrated split-screen comparison of Maya Deren and David Lynch finally emerged as a video that speaks immediately and directly to the viewer but also contains a lot to unpack if they want to go further with it (to dig into this common ground, I would recommend this collection of quotes I posted to accompany another Deren video essay last summer). I've created videos on both directors before so it was a joy to join them together in this approach.

advisory: I would very much suggest listening to the video with headphones or good speakers. I use Lynch's subtle soundscape in Inland Empire (including his song "The Ghost of Love") as the backdrop and there are connections there too, even though Deren's film is silent. While nothing is explicitly spoiler-y, some of the selected scenes are suggestive and/or surprising. If you want to fly completely blind with his work, including Twin Peaks, be warned. The montage also contains violence and frightening images.

Here is the description I wrote for Fandor Keyframe, followed by screencaps of sixty-one comparisons from the video, going film by film.

"As viewers of Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive have frequently recognized, there are many similarities between these two filmmakers (Meshes' innovative co-director Alexander Hammid carried on with a documentary career while Deren's later work continued with her themes and style in Meshes). An ordinary key charged with dangerous supernatural power; characters who multiply, bending space and time; an Angelino atmosphere in which daydream becomes nightmare...these are just a few of Meshes' and Mulholland's common touchstones. Others have compared Meshes to Lost Highway, with characters in high windows nearly or actually viewing themselves on the street below, or Inland Empire, which escalates Mulholland's fragmented identities in a suburban home that serves as a multidimensional portal. In fact these threads - or meshes, if you will - extend to almost all of Lynch's work in the second half of his career, from the moment Twin Peaks took a particularly dark turn in 1990 through Inland Empire's climax sixteen years later.

This video essay holds the two worlds side by side, allowing the correspondences (and there are dozens of them) to emerge without commentary so that you can draw your own conclusions. Mysterious figures recede into the distance. Ordinary living rooms are transformed into ominous, uncertain spaces. Monsters pop out in the middle of the bedroom, and, even worse, familiar faces take on a monstrous quality - suggesting that perhaps these visions of mind or magic have their roots in everyday reality. Some visual links are obviously designed and composed exactly the same but others are more poetic and suggestive, relating ideas as well as images. Are all these connections merely coincidental? Lynch was a student at the AFI in the early seventies, and even back then screenings of Deren's work were staples of such programs. However, when asked by biographer Greg Olson (Beautiful Dark, 2008) if he had seen or even knew of Maya Deren, the avowed non-cinephile Lynch said "No." (Lynch also professed ignorance when early works were compared to Luis Bunuel.)

It's entirely possible that Lynch and Deren (who passed away in 1961, when Lynch was still a teenager) are simply drawing from the same psychic well. It's also possible that Lynch was impacted by her work long ago and forgot the encounter. But does it matter? I think what's important is how the works themselves speak to one another across the decades. Watching them together, especially enveloped by the eerie soundscape of Lynch's Inland Empire, uncanny sensations and euphoric epiphanies course through my nerves and imagination. Maya Deren and David Lynch are brilliant directors not merely because of their vivid images or ability to tell a story without precisely telling a story. They are attuned to something that runs much deeper than pure cinema or pure art, something that strikes a chord deep within. They have the ability to manifest our dream lives onscreen. I hope spending this "lost afternoon" with the two masters inspires you to view these films with renewed attention and appreciation."

For the third and final time in a row, I will be posting every weekday this week.

The Colors of Daisies (video for Fandor Keyframe)

Near the end of March, I was finally able to create something I've been anticipating forever: a video essay on one of my favorite films, the anarchic Czechoslovakian masterpiece Daisies, by Vera Chytilova. If you've been following this blog for a while you probably know my affection for this movie. I have written a full-length review for my "Sunday Matinee" series, included it on my Favorites list (with the accompanying capsule entry coming up in a few months), devoted a visual tribute to its smorgasboard (with bonus images in the mix here), recommended it as part of my Hulu round-up, featured a clip in my "32 Days of Movies" series, and awarded it best editing and runner-up for best picture of '66 in my "alternate Oscars". In fact, Daisies marked my first semi-popular post on this blog back in 2008, when I proposed a set of double features (I paired Daisies with Pandora's Box) and topped the entry with a picture of one of the Marie's floating heads - which has since become my YouTube icon. Aside from Fire Walk With Me and Fists in the Pocket, Daisies is the most-featured title on this site. So yeah, I love this film!

Nonetheless I had no idea what approach I wanted to take for my video beforehand, and the whole thing came together very quickly. Seeking an organizing principle, I was reminded how dazzling and varied the color palette of this movie is. Looking for music to cut to, I randomly stumbled across Bow Wow Wow's "C30, C60, C90," which I didn't even realize I had on my computer. The cheerfully defiant pro-piracy lyrics and persona of singer Annabella Lwin were a perfect match for Chytilova's images. This is probably my shortest video (just about a minute) but it packs a lot in and bears re-watching. I'm pleased to see that by the time it was promoted a few weeks ago (Fandor had to wait in respect to the other filmmakers they were honoring each day of the month), it had already racked up a decent audience and received notice on Indiewire and FilmStage. If you haven't seen the film yet, please let this be your gateway.

Here is the description I wrote for Fandor Keyframe:

"When I saw Daisies for the first time, about a decade ago, I had never heard of the film, nor its director Vera Chytilova. So I entered blind, and received a dazzling, unexpected vision as my reward. There were so many things to adore about Daisies: the sociopathic charisma of its two heroines (helpfully dubbed Marie I and Marie II); the casual free association of the montage, leaping across time and space; the propulsive drive of the film, which carries the viewer through a virtually narrative-less 72 minutes on the sheer energy of its imagination. But if anything epitomizes Chytilova's fearless trapeze act, it's her use of color. Every shade in the spectrum appears in short succession, not only through props and costumes but via monochromatic filters that drench the whole screen in red, or blue, or purple.

After the movie was over, I felt as if I was drunk on color, so it's not surprising that my first video tribute to Daisies focuses on that element. "The Color of Daisies" is a quick, whimsical take on the kaleidoscopic texture of the film, organizing the shots by dominant color from lush green (perhaps the movie's most striking hue) back around the wheel to cool turquoise. It is scored by a pop song as energetic and playfully disruptive as the movie itself and the whole thing lasts only a minute, channeling the film's own sense of anarchic brevity. If you've yet to experience the movie yourself, hopefully this will encourage you, and if you have, the video can serve of a reminder of how masterfully Chytilova utilizes her palette moment-to-moment.

Like many Czechoslovakian films of its period, Daisies was immersed in controversy, a relic of the brief New Wave that climaxed with the Prague Spring in '68 and was crushed by Soviet tanks soon after. Daisies, however, was censored even before the crackdown (humorously, the only official charge the authorities lodged against it was that it wasted food, certainly an accurate accusation). Not only stodgy bureaucrats objected to the film - Jean-Luc Godard grumbled that it was "apolitical and cartoonish." That isn't fair (at least the first part; the film IS proudly cartoonish) but the film's rebellious ferocity is a matter of visceral sensation rather than cerebral contemplation. Fifty years old this year, Daisies remains iconic because its spirit is so deeply embedded in its style. Even a glimpse at its wonders assures us that Chytilova was a master."

Vera Chytilova, director of DAISIES & Annabella Lwin, lead singer of Bow Wow Wow

Images from the full spectrum follow the jump.

The Medium & The Message: 7 Forms of Filmmaking in Lynne Sachs' STATES OF UNBELONGING (video from Fandor Keyframe)

This month on Fandor Keyframe, a different female filmmaker is being celebrated each day. I'm happy to contribute with an entry on Lynne Sachs, an experimental and documentary filmmaker whose work I recently discovered through Fandor where she was honored on March 19. This video essay was created for the occasion, as a tribute to her moving essay film States of UnBelonging (which can be watched here).

Description & images follow the jump.

The Passion of Anna K. (video essay on Jean-Luc Godard & Anna Karina)

Although I prefer to stick to the 3-a-week schedule, it looks like this week I'll be posting on Tuesday and Thursday as well, so stay tuned.

This is a video that has been on my mind for at least four years. Now I'm finally able to realize it for Fandor Keyframe.

Here is my written introduction for the non-narrated video:

Introduction

For six breathless years, actress Anna Karina and her filmmaker husband Jean-Luc Godard forged a cinematic partnership that remains legendary. Their collaboration is charted over the course of seven feature films: Le Petit Soldat (1960), A Woman is a Woman (1961), Vivre sa vie (1962), Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville(1965), Pierrot le fou (1966) and Made in USA (1966). Split into seven montages (one for each film), "The Passion of Anna K." traces the evolution of Karina's craft as well as her purpose within Godard's work. Each montage is bookended by Karina's first and last appearances in the particular film, a guideline that yields surprising revelations. We witness her transformation from playful ingenue to hardboiled pro. Trajectories emerge with tidal rhythm rather than the logic of a straight line: from love to disillusionment, affection to respect, spontaneity to rigor, passivity to power. (To reference a straightforward explication of the couple's relationship and collaboration, see Tyler Knudsen's complementary approach in "Godard and Karina: A Marriage on Film", which I discovered after making this).

Each montage features a simple title to guide us through the ebb and flow of this onscreen relationship.

"Muse" depicts Veronica from Le Petit Soldat as a cherished object of affection, observed externally. Concerned with capturing her vivacious aura but unable to enter her mind, the film itself eventually seems to close in on this butterfly.

"Performance" presents an actress simultaneously more enigmatic and more exposed (especially when Godard includes Karina's weepy line flub), reflecting the fact that in A Woman is a Woman Angela is the central subject rather than just a love interest.

"Discovery" echoes Vivre sa vie's structure with 12 shots (one from each chapter of the film) weaving together Godard's reverential but cold photography of Nana, the actress' growing command of gesture and expression, and the director's own narration of an Edgar Allan Poe story detailing an artist's lethal desire to capture his wife's presence in his art.

"Conversation" reflects Band of Outsiders' raw, uncertain dynamic of director and star, pushing forward from the previous film's breakthrough/dead end. Godard veers between vocalizing Odile's thoughts himself, and allowing Karina to express the character's own ideas and feelings.

"Awakening" chronicles the longing emotional distance between Alphaville's stoic hero and the brainwashed Natasha. Linking Karina's acting prowess with Godard's growing alienation from his muse, this genuinely poignant scenario climaxes with a declaration of love whose formality echoes the couple's first collaboration, suggesting lovers as strangers.

"Rupture" represents Pierrot le Fou as the collaborators' passionate, doomed final fling. Marianne's story is a brilliant microcosm of the entire Karina-Godard dynamic (from meet-cute through intense romance to disenchantment, distance, and destruction), conducted with a despairing self-awareness climaxing (for the third and final time) with the death of Karina's character.

"Freedom" serves as a surprise epilogue, using Made in USA to move beyond the previous films' framework. Karina plays Paula, a strong if also cartoonish heroine (the comic-book stylization of the film has been heightened by the montage's own design). Following a bittersweet reversal of the earlier films' climaxes, we conclude on a cautiously optimistic note, with the character, the actress, and the director all moving into an uncertain, open-ended future.

Update 2017: H. Perry Horton wrote a great little piece to accompany this video for Film School Rejects called "The Muse Matters" - check it out!

uploaded to YouTube 2017 (update 2020: but the link is currently private due to a copyright back-and-forth that I don't want to deal with again until my Twin Peaks videos are finished... as of 2022, it is public again)

The initial impetus for this idea came from Richard Brody's thorough Godard biography Everything is Cinema (2008) which connects the dots between Godard's tumultuous relationship with Karina and the stories he tells, events he depicts, and ways that he scripts and especially photographs Karina's characters. While that context isn't mandatory to appreciate the video (let alone the actual films) it certainly does add another interesting dimension to their dynamic, especially given the personal, confessional nature of Godard's filmmaking. Personally, I think Godard's and Karina's collaboration gets to the heart of movies - the interaction of an author's point of view with the larger world, a world that (especially when embodied by the human form of a performer) may push back with another identity, creating new complications and yielding unforeseen treasures.

Additional pictures follow the jump...

Back to the Future: Welcome to Hill Valley (video)

update 10/20: The video is up!

Six Years in America: Louis Malle's God's Country (video)

This past weekend, my "7 Facts About Fire Walk With Me" video was shared on Indiewire's Press Play, with a great little write-up from Max Winter. Check it out! (There's also some discussion on Facebook, via Indiewire and also Twin Peaks Worldwide.) Indiewire will also be sharing another of my 2014 videos soon, so stay tuned.

This video's side-by-side approach (especially its split stereo soundtrack) is influenced by Kevin B. Lee's study of Hoop Dreams and it is consistent with the work I've recently done on Neon Genesis Evangelion and Twin Peaks as well as a video coming soon (I won't say the subject but here's a clue: I'm hoping to have it ready before October 21, 2015 at 4:29pm). Here is the description published on Fandor Keyframe:

In 1979, Louis Malle visited Glencoe, Minnesota, for PBS, recording interviews with various townspeople. Six years later, he returned to film short follow-ups, checking up on the progress and/or decline of the town and its populace. The two trips were combined in the documentary God’s Country (1986), with the later interviews appearing as a short epilogue at the end of the movie. “6 Years in America” uses split-screen to directly juxtapose these two sections  of the film, allowing us to observe two eras simultaneously and reflect on what the passage of time has wrought.

The video, as well as some additional images, follow the jump:

Come, Sweet Death: a video tribute to The Phantom Carriage & Wild Strawberries

My most recent video has gone up on Fandor Keyframe (it has since been moved to my personal channel). Here is the introduction I gave them:

In The Phantom Carriage (1921), Swedish director Victor Sjöström played a man forced by death (or, rather, Death) to confront his unhappy life. Thirty-six years later, as an old man close to death himself, Sjöström returned to this concept in Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. “Come, Sweet Death” explores the macabre, poignant, disturbing images and words of these two films, sometimes side-by-side, sometimes back-to-back. Death was an important subject for both Sjöström and Bergman, not so much for its own sake, but for the ways it illuminated life itself.

The video appears after the jump:

Learning to Look: Eye Contact in Satyajit Ray's The Big City (video)

Note: True Detective episode 3 will go up on Thursday. I haven't watched it yet.

My second video for Fandor went up a few weeks ago, but yesterday it was posted on the site itself. The reception so far has been very enthusiastic, which is certainly encouraging. Here is what I wrote about it:

It’s all in the eyes, and this case they belong to Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee), a housewife-turned-saleswoman in Satyajit Ray‘s classic film The Big City. Her personal growth is charted through her gazes, whether they are exchanged with husband, customers, boss—or even her own reflection. Throughout The Big City, Ray uses eye contact to establishes familiarity, intimacy and shifting power dynamics; the story of the film is told through the way the characters look at one another.

And here is the video, along with a couple images...

Manufacturing Dreams in Street of Crocodiles (video)

Last week my first video essay for Fandor was posted. From now on I will be contributing videos regularly to the site, probably in addition to videos for my own YouTube and Vimeo channels. So after the break following Journey Through Twin Peaks, I am very much escalating the video pace this year. You can read the introduction to my contribution on Fandor (although the video in this link no longer works), and I would also encourage you to check out the short story linked in my description:

The Quay Brothers’ stop-motion masterpiece Street of Crocodiles presents a dream world composed of eerie objects, sharp movements and cryptic visual associations. The film borrows its title and one of its scenes from Bruno Schulz‘s avant-garde short story about a small-town neighborhood that imitates big-city life (select “Ulica Krokodyli” to read the story here). Likewise, the onscreen puppets experience both uncanny promise and frustrating limitation. “Manufacturing Dreams” is an open meditation on Street of Crocodiles, exploring the Quays’ techniques and dramatic motifs through a series of questions and observations.

The video follows the jump, along with some pictures...