Film - 21-87
Back before the name George Lucas didn't cause me to sigh and hang my head in a sort of weary despair, there was a film called THX1138. This was his first full film, which showed a weird distopian vision of the future, it's inhabitants mere cogs in a machine, which appeared to have no actual purpose. I love it.
You can't get the original film any more sadly. Lucas decided to go back and add loads of digital effects in, hell, you can probably see Boba Fett in it somehwere. But the original is consigned to the obselete technology of VHS video and laserdisc. I bought THX on dvd, but can't bring myself to watch it. If it had the original version still on, you could at least say it was an interesting experiment, but it doesn't and it isn't. I'm probably being over the top here, but it feels like either an act of cultural vandalism, or theft. I feel he's let me see this film and then stolen it back.
Anyway! THX1138 was inspired in part by this short film by Arthur Lipsett. It is quite a haunting film, less than ten minutes long, made up of a mix of images and sounds. Exactly the sort of thing I'd normally run a mile from, but this isn't just a random mess, it's something that has been orchestrated by a human being to provoke thought and emotion. It's like someone has pieced together the 20th century equivelant of the dead sea scrolls of and spliced them together with new meaning to create a new religious text out of them.
http://www.nfb.ca/film/21-87/
You can't get the original film any more sadly. Lucas decided to go back and add loads of digital effects in, hell, you can probably see Boba Fett in it somehwere. But the original is consigned to the obselete technology of VHS video and laserdisc. I bought THX on dvd, but can't bring myself to watch it. If it had the original version still on, you could at least say it was an interesting experiment, but it doesn't and it isn't. I'm probably being over the top here, but it feels like either an act of cultural vandalism, or theft. I feel he's let me see this film and then stolen it back.
Anyway! THX1138 was inspired in part by this short film by Arthur Lipsett. It is quite a haunting film, less than ten minutes long, made up of a mix of images and sounds. Exactly the sort of thing I'd normally run a mile from, but this isn't just a random mess, it's something that has been orchestrated by a human being to provoke thought and emotion. It's like someone has pieced together the 20th century equivelant of the dead sea scrolls of and spliced them together with new meaning to create a new religious text out of them.
http://www.nfb.ca/film/21-87/
posted by paulvonscott at 3:59 PM
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