Don’t Go In the Basement

Begone Dull Care

In this extraordinary short animation, Evelyn Lambart and Norman McLaren painted colours, shapes, and transformations directly onto their filmstrip. The result is a vivid interpretation, in fluid lines and colour, of jazz music played by the Oscar Peterson Trio.

Pas de Deux

Two ballet dancers perform a dance enhanced with surreal after-image visuals.

Non Plus One

A young writer struggling to create a good story meets a cute waitress and imagination and fantasy blossom.

Blinkity Blank

A playful exercise in intermittent animation and spasmodic imagery. Playing with the laws relating to persistence of vision and after-image on the retina of the eye, McLaren engraves pictures on blank film creating vivid, percussive effects.

Free Radicals

In this powerful abstract film with a soundtrack of African drum music, Lye scratched "white ziggle-zag-splutter scratches" on to black leather, using a variety of tools from saw teeth to arrow heads. The first version of the film won a major award at the International Experimental Film Festival Held in Brussels in 1958 in association with the World's Fair. Stan Brakhage described the film as "an almost unbelievably immense masterpiece".

Earthy Eyes

A short film based on the song "Earthy Eyes" by Whale Belly shot in Brooklyn, NY.

Under the Sea: A Descendants Story

Mal emerges from the shadows of a mystical forest onto a dark coastline where she crosses paths with Dizzy.

A Visual Poem

Surreal environments take center stage in this visual odyssey.

Night Stalker

A young woman is pulled into a bizarre sub-world by a Chinese takeout box.

In the Shade of the Old Applesauce

This short animation is dubbed a "Paramount Screen Souvenir" is a lost Fleischer Studios Screen Song featuring Betty Boop and Bimbo.

T.G.: Psychic Rally in Heaven

An experimental film of the group Throbbing Gristle in concert.

unseen existence

A collage hosted by "The Pointless", a dying overlord.

Imagine

A camera tracks through endless rooms while lives unfold.

The Foolish Frog

A farmer wanted words to go with the tune he was playing when he saw a frog sitting on the bank of the stream. The frog did something silly which gave the farmer the words for his song. The farmer went to the corner store to sing his song for people there.

Bongo

Bongo, the performing bear, escapes from the circus and tries to adapt to life in the wild.

112 Sabsections of Skyline

Animation work that approached relation of score without time that undertakes expression and the blueprint with time axis of music axis. The time axis was given to the score and "Made of the score an image" was tried. It keeps likening the music sheet to the bird that stopped in the electric wire, and the image doing the panning.

Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention: Live at Whisky a Go Go 1968

Shot on July 23, 1968, this historical 16mm footage of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention at Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, CA has been newly restored from the Vault! The film has been newly synced to the 2023 mixes, marking the first time it's ever been seen with audio. Frank Zappa never had the opportunity to see this footage synced to the music. Now you do. The film was shot in increments and features silent performance footage of The Mothers along with scenes involving The Freaks and the premier of The GTO's (Girls Together Outrageously). In the audience were Flo & Eddie (The Turtles), John Mayall, Elliot Ingber (The Fraternity Of Man), Alice Cooper and members of the Rolling Stones.

The Fountain of Arethusa

“La Fontaine d'Aréthuse” opens with what has been described as a “shimmering wash of sound in the piano, octave leaps in the left hand passing above and below repeated chords in the right,” a tune which apparently suggests the splashing waters of a fountain. The story “told” by the music involves a naked water goddess on the river shore, who is pursued by a hunter, before disappearing into thin air to join her water once again.

The Hangover Club - Devil's Watching You

Black and Tan

Duke Ellington plays hot jazz in a fictional story that finds him down on his luck; he tries in vain to dissuade his friend, dancer Fredi Washington, from working with heart trouble even though it means work for his band. Sure enough, she collapses on stage...