Hamfat Asar (1965)
"The strangeness of this film is laced with carefully moulded apocalypses as the filmmaker explores a vision of life beyond death – the Elysian fields of Homer, Dante’s Purgatorio, de Chirico’s stitched plain. A moving single picture. Evolving the structure or script for the film involved a process of controlled hallucination, whereby I sat quietly without moving, looking at the background until the pieces began to move without my inventing things for them to do. I found that, given the chance, they really did have important business to attend to, and my job was to furnish them with the power of motion. I never deviated from this plan." —Canyon Cinema
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Excellent, a Must See
Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Of all the films included in the American Film Treasures/Avant Garde boxed set, this one I believe is the only one that's entirely animated. It basically consists of a steady stream of Victorian era style illustrations emerging against a cliff lined seascape. Some are static and some move around, like the weird mushroom-headed butterfly you see a couple of times. A conga-like drumbeat serves as a musical soundtrack, as any number of various objects 'walk a tightrope' strung across the vista. These objects don't seem to be connected in any way, as they include things like old time scientific instruments and an unrelated number of fish. I guess the attempt here is for the viewer to assign one's own meaning to what's seen, as it's all very whimsical. It didn't do much for me, but at least it showed more creativity than some of the other offerings in this set of film shorts.
Larry Jordan's oddly animated film "Hamfat Asar" can be seen on "American Film Treasures/Avant Garde Film: Disc 2"--a compilation of mostly forgotten art films of the 20th century. This DVD set is NOT for the casual viewer and sometimes I wonder why I watched the films--as some of them were VERY artsy and weird! The art style of this animated film is a bit like the Terry Gilliam animations on "Monty Python's Flying Circus", though Jordan's are all monochromatic and look much like 18th and 19th century drawings and photos come to life by snipping the drawings apart and moving them using stop-motion. It's not a very complicated method but they work well with the very simple bongo accompaniment. It's all a bit odd and lacks an apparent theme as because of this it is difficult, if not impossible, to rate.