DC's

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Forward Instinct Midnight Ultra

‘In the American Southwest, a lone witch hunter travels across the desert, seeking to wipe out cultists of all sorts. Fight a variety of goons and ghouls, through small towns to dimension-spanning motels. Blast your way through a neon-dripped, pixelated nightmare in this high-speed, high-thrills FPS.’

Trailer

Artpass Playthrough

Final Cutscene

 

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Jeremy Couillard Sometimes to Deal with the Difficulty of Being Alive, I Need to Believe There Is a Possibility That Life Is Not Real

‘A video experience, a simulation, a game that plays itself, a database of games, an absurdist, sci-fi play, emails going to nowhere, conversation starters, meditations, secret lairs, fights, break-dancing, play on a network, play by yourself, don’t play at all and just watch, set it up in a gallery, set it up at a party…’

Home FurnishingLowRes

 

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HoneyBeeSoftware Djilyaro

‘Djilyaro is a short, first-person psychedelic game. In a strange place you awake with one goal, to find all the pieces and to be set free of this strange island. Although the closer you get to completion the stranger things become.’

 

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Double Fine Presents Kids

‘At the very beginning of Kids, you help a small group of faceless bodies fall into a dark hole. You don’t have much say in the matter, either: a crowd forms around the rim of the inky pit, and as you touch the screen, they all topple over. In the next scene, those same bodies helplessly float downward into seeming nothingness. You can’t stop them, but if you hold a finger on a body, it will temporarily slow down before falling again. I’ve played through this opening multiple times, and I’m still not sure what it means. That’s kind of the point. “Depending on who is playing it, there are quite different reactions,” explains Michael Frei, a Swiss filmmaker and artist who co-created Kids. “Some see it as something dark, some find it hilarious.”’

Trailer

Gameplay

 

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Mogila Games Clinically Dead

‘It will happen eventually to all of us, but Mr. Samson is the guy who has no luck today – he’s dying. He is falling into his own mind and each next second is taking longer and longer. In the beginning, the first second felt like three seconds. Normal time was slower for him than for others. The next second one was like five minutes. He had a lot of time to rethink his life. For everyone else, this is the matter of seconds, but for him, this was taking forever. Finally, the last second of his life on earth was stretched to an infinite period of time… and this is the place where we are starting our adventure. The adventure where you are moving through a 4-dimensional system. Space and time are connected here and you are free to move not only in three directions (width, height, and depth) but also in the fourth one – time.’

Gameplay

 

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Cylne Cylne

‘Cylne is a first person surreal exploration game having a poetic and philosophical side. Explore and feel unreal worlds filled with environmental enigmas to try to achieve the chapter called “The Choice”… The meaning of the game is up to your interpretation and doesn’t impose narrative elements. Cylne is a particularly difficult game to describe. […] It renders the most basic concept of interaction unfamiliar by dropping the player in a world with its own rules, with its own sense of twisted dream-logic.’

Gameplay

 

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Rice Cooker Republic Bokida – Heartfelt Reunion

‘An open-world adventure with puzzle elements and a minimalist aesthetic. Bokida takes place on a dormant, seemingly monochromatic world of light that gradually reveals its beauty. Experience freedom while exploring a peaceful, intriguing environment.’

Trailer

Gameplay

 

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Colorfiction 0°N 0°W

‘0°N 0°W is a first person exploration game with varied visual styles. Each time you play, the available environments are shuffled around, making each playthrough a unique experience. A cross country road trip strands you in a mysterious town lost amidst towering mesas and swaying dunes, will you beckon the glowing call of its lone storefront and embark on a fantastical multidimensional walkabout through space and time?’

Trailer

Gameplay

 

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Benjamin Outram Crystal Vibes feat. Ott.

‘Experience candy-colored psychedelic sound rippling through an endless crystal universe. Crystal Vibes utilizes the cutting edge of spatial 3D audio and sound visualization that maps sound and light based on the science of the human senses, to push the frontiers of technology-mediated sensory experience in virtual reality. With the project’s predecessor described as “transcendent” and “like traveling through a psychedelic kaleidoscope” (Forbes 2016), this piece ups the ante with music from producer Ott.’

Trailer

Gameplay

 

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Colin Northway Deep Under the Sky

‘Try life as a strange jellyfish on a remarkable world. Learn to fly through the skies of a psychedelic Venus, to explore and flourish. Fling, jet, grapple and roll your way through 80 levels of tentacle-flying physics fun. Time your bursts just right to explore every cleft and cranny of the floating beasts inhabiting the mysterious dark side of Venus. This game uses only one button but don’t be fooled – you’ll have to think like a jellyfish and zen to the heady biorhythms of the planet before you learn its secrets.’

Trailer

Gameplay

 

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Darjeeling Californium

‘Californium is a first-person exploration game created as a homage to the American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Dick is well known for his many written works including The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? which inspired the movie Blade Runner. He is also widely recognised as the author of the short stories that inspired other such films as Minority Report and Total Recall. For those familiar with Dick’s work it is easy to see how Californium was created with his unique style in mind; Dick often focuses on the issues of drug abuse and paranoia, both of which are touched upon in the game.’

Trailer

Gameplay

 

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McKenna Sanderson Ethereality

‘Ethereality is an experimental graphic design project. The overall concept is a “three-dimensional” interactive rave flyer in the format of a simple game. Once the player has collected all 100 kandi, they will gain entry to the “real-life” rave – the door will disappear, revealing all the necessary information to make it to the rave (all that would normally be found on a flyer.) The different music throughout the environment is intended to mimic the feeling of being at a party, or club. The overall look and feel is based on the sensory overload often experienced at a rave. This project was heavily inspired by 90s rave culture and graphic design on rave flyers found on ravepreservationproject.com’

Gameplay

 

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Dreaming Methods Wallpaper

‘A US-based computer engineer and innovator returns to his remote family home in rural England following the death of his elderly mother. His agenda: to close the place down and sell it. But not before he tries out an experimental Augmented Reality device he’s been working on, primed to help him uncover the history behind one particularly enigmatic room in the house – a room that has remained locked since his childhood. Part of a research project called Reading Digital Fiction led by Professor Alice Bell from Sheffield Hallam University, Wallpaper was designed, written and coded by digital artists Andy Campbell and Judi Alston.’

Gameplay

 

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Nathan Whitmore GPT Adventure

‘I just got hopelessly lost in a bizarre new text adventure game, but for once it wasn’t entirely my fault. That’s because the game, appropriately named GPT Adventure, is generated as I play by a neural network that was trained on transcripts of existing text adventure games. It’s like a strange, dreamlike version of 1970s text adventures like “Zork” or “Adventureland.”

‘The game was created by Northwestern University neuroscience graduate student Nathan Whitmore. In his blog, Whitmore writes that he was inspired by the Mind Game, a fictional game generated in real-time by AI in the sci-fi novel “Ender’s Game.” GPT Adventure — which you can play here — isn’t that sophisticated, but the experiment is a fascinating glimpse into the future of procedurally-generated video games.

‘The game uses GPT-2, the infamous fake news-writing algorithm created by OpenAI. Like most AI systems, the game tends to forget what it already told the player, transporting them willy-nilly through various chambers and corridors whether they like it or not.’

 

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Asmik Ace Entertainment LSD: Dream Emulator

‘”LSD: Dream Emulator” is an obscure Playstation game released only in Japan. The game lives up to half its title – the people who made it clearly overdosed on hallucinogens. The “Dream Emulator” part fares a little worse. Imagine, for a moment, that your dream world is a Nintendo 64. This game’s emulation of that world would consist of taping the N64 controller to a washing machine and having you watch your laundry while a Japanese guy hums the Mario theme in the background.’

Gameplay

Gameplay

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. Today we luck out because a kindly, dedicated reader of this blog, Kevin Renfield, has gathered together fifteen psychedelic video games he likes enough to pass along, and they are indeed pretty cool. Check them out. Thank you so much, Kevin. ** rewritedept, Okay, I’ll dedicate at least some initial time to McClusky. I love Pinback, as you probably know. They’re grotesquely undervalued. One of the characters in Zac’s and my next film sings a little bit of a Pinback song even. It sounds like today’s post might be up your current alley. Uh, let me think about that book recommendation thing. ** Adem Berbic, One man’s offbeat is another man’s towering. Martin Amis, role model, how extremely uninteresting. It’s interesting how ‘class’ always seems to rear its head as a fetish subject amongst Brits. I guess I associate ‘class’ with being overly adult, but I’m weird. I don’t even read The New Yorker. Charlotte would be good, obviously. You guys have a lot of very good young writers over there, shouldn’t be too hard. ** Bill, Hey. Yeah, sometimes Lee Bul really speaks to me, and sometimes the work seems like it should a film projected onto it or something. I don’t know Zao Wou-ki, but I’ll look for the work. Thanks. ** Charalampos, Ah, a true Aumont fan. Nice. The Rollin film is fun. Greetings back from … I think it’s still called Paris. ** Hugo, I just almost never find Pattinson’s acting interesting or convincing in the slightest. Did you make it to London? ** Carsten, Happy to have located a Carsten treat. I’ve suddenly come down with an eye infection, and my left eye is all swollen, which is to say I’ll be joining you on antibiotics any minute now, I suspect. Hopefully it’ll effect me like it does you. I need to shake off jet lag’s fumes. I’ll check out ‘Che’. Soderberg’s a huge fan of Robert Pollard, had him to do the score for one of his films (‘Bubble’) and attempted unsuccessfully to do a broadway musical with Pollard, which eternally endears the guy to me. Very interesting thoughts re: him/his work. Thanks, pal. ** hagai aviel, Yes, Tina Aumont was in Gian Luigi Polidoro’s ‘Satyricon’ (1969), not Fellini’s. My mistake. I’ve corrected that. Thanks. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks for the alert re: Bedwyr Williams. I don’t know his work, but I just followed him on Instagram, so I’ll catch up. Oh, and I’ll examine his Patreon too. ** John Christopher, Hi! Oh, cool. This week is a little rough for me, but write to me, yes, and let’s figure something out. Safe trip today. ** Gustavo, Hi, Gustavo. Good to meet you. Thanks a lot for coming inside. And for your kind words about my stuff. I’m really happy you saw and liked ‘Room Temperature’. Please come back anytime and hang out. I’d be interested to know more about you and what you do, if you feel like it. ** kenley, Hi! Are you still in Wonderland? My body is gradually adjusting to its current time zone. But one of my eyes is suddenly infected, so it’s trading one mishap for another. Have major fun. ** Diesel Clementine, Hi! Gluon, total news to me. Strange, interesting, I’ll investigate. Free indirect voice … what exactly do you mean by that? I’m not sure I know. A metaphysics? Mm, probably. I mostly think about form and let the other aspects happen instinctively while I chisel, but, yeah, probably. I’ll think about it. In real life? No, I don’t think I take a metaphysical approach to the real version, or not consciously. Why? You sounds very alert and percolative and great. Me, I’m angling towards full power. Thank you, Diesel. ** Steve, I have an eye infection at the moment, so, different effects, but I get and feel for you and yours. At the moment there are no upcoming film travels in the US, just in Europe (Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, maybe Frankfurt, …), but something might come up. My lag is fading out, not rapidly enough, of course, but I didn’t have to take a nap yesterday, and that’s something. ** HaRpEr //, Not right as rain yet, more like wrong as drizzle. I love Clementi’s films, particularly the one she’s in. They’re very of their time and psychedelic, but amazing. I just watched ‘Casanova’ again after decades this weekend for my Zoom Book/Film Club. It’s imperfect, but if you like the ‘Satyricon’ era Fellini, there’s a lot of great stuff in there. I wrote a porn film once that never got made, and it ended up being anti-horny, which is why it never got made. ** Nicholas., Well, hello there, sir. Don’t stop, for goodness sake. Dinner? Uh, my vegan stuff and mashed potatoes wrapped in tortillas version of my usual eating material. Your journal entry is beautiful. It has this kind of serenity or something that’s new to your tone (to me) and quite effective. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! Awesome that you watched ‘Visa de censure n° X’. And dug it. You continue to rule. Clearly. ** Laura, I’m just bored of sexed up stuff. There’s too much stuff that has giving people a boner as one of its top priorities. Too often it’s just a substitute for actual thinking and aesthetic adventuring. It’s all just so edgy conventional. I don’t know. My reading got cancelled because I didn’t arrive in time. That’s all. Fine with me because I don’t relish doing readings. Here? Just trying to wake up enough to do all the things I need to do right now. Not shiny, but maybe soon. Feel upper! ** Thom, Hi. Oh, I guess I missed it, yeah. Thanks for copying/pasting. Yay, Trecartin is a god. ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ too in its own way. Worth the hunt, pal. Holobiosis is a good title. It made my mouth kind of crazy when I pronounced it. I’m so happy that you’re reading such amazing stuff, and that you’re inspired in your writing. That is the ultimate accomplishment to any artist, to trigger that. You sound really fiery. I’m sort of vaguely returning to my usual state, thank you. Any minute now. Or, well, hour now. Do your week up proud. ** Right. Let Kevin’s picks sweep over you until I see you tomorrow.

 

‘Over the course of the past, say, twenty years, I’ve gradually become more and more aware of the late actress Tina Aumont, who died in 2006. She’s one of the great (albeit largely unknown) beauties of the 60s and 70s, and a sort of gorgeous bad girl “Zelig” figure uniting disparate famous people from old school Hollywood types to the Warhol crowd and 60s and 70s European film notables. Truly she was the junkie underground “Kevin Bacon” game connector of the era, if nearly forgotten today.

‘I first laid eyes on the luminous Aumont in Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise, but she was billed there under her married name Tina Maquand. I probably first read her name in Richard Witts’ Nico: The Life and Lies of an Icon, his 1995 biography of the Velvet Underground chanteuse. The first time I actually saw Aumont onscreen—and had any context for her—was later that same year when she was an interviewee in the Nico: Icon documentary.

‘So my entré to Tina Aumont was being a big Nico freak, which invariably led to an interest in the films of Nico’s paramour, bohemian French film director Philippe Garrel. Aumont was in several of Garrel’s underground films and was the one who first introduced Garrel—then seen as a sort of cinematic Rimbaud—to Nico in 1969, suggesting that her new music (The Marble Index) would be perfect for his Le Lit de la Vierge. (She gifted him with a version of “The Falconeer” heard only in that film, which starred Aumont, with Pierre Clémenti as Jesus.)

‘Aumont was born on Valentine’s Day of 1946 in Hollywood, California and it was at birth that her first Zelig-style cameo took place: Her mother was the ill-fated “Queen of Technicolor” Maria Montez, the exotic star of such films as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Cobra Woman. (Jack Smith’s notoriously perverse Flaming Creatures is an homage to Montez and the word “camp” was practically coined to describe her flamboyant performances. Kenneth Anger has cited Cobra Woman as his favorite film.) Marlene Dietrich is said to have sung baby Tina to sleep and Jean Cocteau wrote a poem for her (“La Fille aux étoiles”) when she was born. An auspicious birth by any definition, but her mother died of a heart attack at the age of 31 when Tina was just five. Her father was the dashing French actor and war hero Jean-Pierre Aumont.

‘By the time she was 17, with the full approval and encouragement of her father, who thought she was a wild child and wanted to see her settle down, Tina married actor Christian Maquand in 1963. Maquand was a heartthrob actor who was in And God Created Woman playing opposite Brigitte Bardot. He also directed the star-studded adaptation of Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg’s Candy. He was 19 years her senior and close friends with director Roger Vadim and Marlon Brando. This is where her social circle really starts to expand. Imagine what a documentary might look like about Tina Aumont, containing as it would film footage and photographs of her at that age alongside of people like Brando, Vadim, Jane Fonda, Roman Polanski and Donald Cammell. The great New York acting teacher Stella Adler. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the Stones inner circle: art dealer Robert Fraser, Stash Klossowski and Marianne Faithfull. Bob Dylan. The Who. You get the picture.

‘In 1966 she shot a western with Dean Martin and Alain Delon called Texas Across The River, but around this time she had a miscarriage that Maquand blamed her for and their three year marriage ended. Within the year she’d moved in with artist Frédéric Pardo in Paris where the friends dropping by their psychedelic apartment included Pierre Clémenti, Zouzou, Anita Pallenberg and Warhol “superstar” Viva. The couple then moved to Rome in 1967 where Aumont hung out with Jimi Hendrix and made films with the likes of Klaus Kinski; appeared in erotic filmmaker Tinto Brass’s oddball underground film The Howl, Philippe Garrel’s poetic Le Lit de la Vierge and played opposite Pierre Clémenti in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Godard-influenced Partner. She also appeared in Playboy magazine, shot by Angelo Frontoni with “Rapunzel” length locks.

‘Tina Aumont had a reputation as a hard drug user, but for several years she managed to keep her behavior on film sets professional. Frédéric Pardo said of Aumont that her mother had left her “a very peculiar will. She revealed in it that she had spent time with the devil, as a voodoo practitioner. Tina quickly followed her onto the slippery self-destructive slope…” Despite this, she was still cast in films with Liza Minnelli, Ingrid Bergman and Catherine Deneuve. Tinto Brass (who called Aumont the most beautiful woman he’d ever worked with) cast her in his kinky Third Reich tale Salon Kitty. In 1975 she was in Roberto Rossellini’s The Messiah and played opposite Donald Sutherland in Fellini’s Casanova the following year.

‘But Aumont’s career took a nosedive when she was arrested in Italy in 1978 and convicted with the illegal importation of 400 grams of opium smuggled in tiny Buddhas from Thailand. Aumont was sentenced to three years imprisonment, reduced on appeal to just nine months, but she was deported from Italy and moved back to France. She worked only sporadically after that. Tina Aumont died in her sleep at the age of 60 in late 2006.’ — Richard Metzger, Dangerous Minds

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Tina Aumont tumblr
Tina Aumont Tribute Page
Tina Aumont page
Tina Aumont @ IMDb
Tina Aumont @ blacklodge
Tina Aumont @ infinitetext
TINA AUMONT, NUIT SANS ÉTOILE
Tina Aumont’s grave
Waiting for Tina
“Torso”: Enter If You Dare the Bizarre World of the Psychosexual Mind
Tina Aumont @ MUBI
Fragments d’un dictionnaire amoureux: Tina Aumont
“The Girl with those Eyes”
Tina Aumont @ Sens Critique

 

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Extras

Tina Aumont (1985) by Gérard Courant

Clips from Frédéric Pardo’s Home Movie, filmed in Morocco 1968 on the set of Philippe Garrel’s Le Lit de la Vierge.

 

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How I met Tina Aumont
from Romanhattan/KOSMOCHLOR

 

It was some time around the turn of the millennium. Film producer and actor Ivan Galietti, an Italian friend transplanted in New York, had come to Paris for one of his frequent visits to Tina, who was fifty-four or fifty-five and looked ten years younger.

She was one of the kindest persons I’d ever met. How, I wondered, can this woman be a myth of the twentieth century, and be so easy-going, so approachable, like the girl next door.

The first thing that struck me was her eyes, immense, dark, soulful. Age tarnishes most beauties, but her face, dominated by those incredible eyes, remained unlined. Her youthful looks weren’t the result of the surgeon’s scalpel. Even if she had needed to negotiate with time, which she did not, she couldn’t have afforded the cost.

She could afford pretty much … nothing. After her glory days, her father’s heritage in the hands of her stepmother, an Italian actress, she was reduced to living in a minuscule apartment located in a modest Parisian quarter full of penniless immigrants, and the rent was paid by the city’s social services. Tina’s flamboyant career had taken a downturn in the late seventies, when she was banned from Italy, her country of adoption, for drug possession. Leaving Italy had broken her heart.

Tina worked with great directors like Fellini, scandalous directors like Tinto Brass, who said she was the most beautiful woman with whom he’d ever worked, and many others. Several among the films in which she starred were intellectual and elegant, other fell into the category of B movies. To all her films, she brought her magnetic, compelling presence.

But Tina loved the needle, and little by little her contracts dwindled to nothing. The French television tried to lure her back into acting, but she seldom kept up with the schedule, and when the dressers prepared her for a scene, they could see the needle holes constellating her arms.

The day I met Tina, Ivan, my boyfriend Pierre and I set off with her for a promenade in the forest of Fontainebleau, half an hour or so to the south of Paris. Before leaving, we had a couple of beers in a café. She had water, an entire bottle. At the time, she was already treated for respiratory problems, but she rolled joints in full sight on the café table, and she smoke the first in a taxi, to the driver’s despair. Unabashed, she rolled down the window and puffed on.

The second time I saw her, it was at her funeral in Paris, Cimetière du Montparnasse, on the 18th of November 2006.

Paris had gifted us with one of those wonderful autumn days, sunny and warm. I arrived early, and Ivan was nowhere in sight. Tina’s friends had gathered in front of the entrance. Knowing nobody, I waited on the opposite side of the street. The crowd stared at me, a few heads put together, whispering. What crosses your mind when, during a ceremony, a bunch of strangers can’t pull their gazes off you? I wondered whether I had picked the right clothes for a funeral. I tugged uncomfortably at my black sweater, glanced down at my long skirt, grey with black arabesques, and light-brown leather boots, but could find nothing wrong with my attire, and tossed my grey shawl over my shoulder, to give myself a countenance.

Ivan arrived at last, in time for the crowd to move over to the grave. As these gatherings go, a few friends recounted their memories of the deceased. Ivan read a poem he’d written for Tina.

I remember the anecdote told by Nadine Trintignant (sister of Tina’s first husband, Christian Marquand). In a scene, Tina, standing before the camera, was supposed to start walking to the right. During the first take, she walked off to the left. “Cut!” director Lina Wertmuller ordered. “Tina, you know you should walk to the right.” Tina nodded. “Okay.” The camera rolled, and Tina walked to the left. “To the right, Tina, please!” Tina smiled. “To the right. No problem.” And off to the left she went. Take after take, there was no way to convince her to walk as the script demanded. It’s not that she refused to comply, but some daydream held her in a firm grasp. Finally, one of the grips lay down on the floor, out of the camera’s view, and gently turned Tina’s feet to the right, and she stepped in that direction.

After the funeral, Ivan and I followed Tina’s friends to a bistro. Someone showed me one of her last photographs, taken in the hospital. Despite the oxygen tubes, she hadn’t changed a bit. At sixty, she still looked young.

Now was the moment to enquire about the strange gazes pinned on me when I arrived at the cemetery. So I put the question to the woman sitting next to me.

She answered: “You looked so much like her, we thought Tina had found the way to attend her own funeral. It would have been typical of her.”

“I look nothing like her.” I was going through one of my dark-hair phases, when I dye my reddish-brown hair dark brown or black, with a long fringe (or bangs, my American friends would say), and I’d hidden my eyes behind large sunglasses. But still.

“I can see it now,” the woman said. “But the silhouette and the hair were so similar we really thought her ghost had come to say goodbye.”

Goodbye, Tina. You aren’t forgotten. Walk free, in the direction of your desire. Maybe I’ll see you around Paris, some day.

 

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17 of Tina Aumont’s 57 roles

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Joseph Losey Modesty Blaise (1966)
‘Tina Aumont began her career by chance in the movie “Modesty Blaise” by Joseph Losey under the name of Tina MARQUAND, her name of wife (she was married from 1963 to 1967 with Christian MARQUAND, the brother of Nadine TRINTIGNANT) before resuming his maiden name after her divorce. Her character is stabbed in the stomach by one of Dirk Bogarde’s henchmen in a marketplace; she dies shortly afterwards with Monica Vitti kneeling by her side.’ — collaged

Trailer

the entire film

 

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Pierre Clementi Visa de censure n° X (1967)
‘I must have taken LSD without realizing it… It seems Clémenti made a whole portrait about an epoch in this short movie, covered with neon light, symbolism, rituals, esotericism, student movements, friendships, partnerships and many drugs, at the improvisation sound of guitar, trumpet, besides indian music (of course!). Images jump off the screen without having any type of connection among them, they fade into frenzy and apparent confusion of memory… Transmitting us detachment, sensitivity and ‘transcendentalism’ through drugs (something conceptualized by the spirit of that time), brings us to stunning sensations, amidst memories and records of its creator.’ — Luana Pinheiro

Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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Bernardo Bertolucci Partner (1968)
‘In PARTNER, Bernardo Bertolucci conflated his interests in psychoanalysis, nonlinear narrative, and Godard to create a uniquely avant-garde work unlike anything in his ouevre. The film is loosely based on Dostoyevsky’s novel THE DOUBLE and concerns an alienated, puckish young man named Jacob (Pierre Clementi) who confronts his own double. Jacob allows his doppelganger to take over his life; the second Jacob commandeers his predecessor’s theater class in the hopes of creating living theater–as a violent act of social revolution. The idea of students wreaking havoc was not an unfamiliar one in 1968, and Bertolucci refuses to take Jacob’s dangerous intellectual posturing lightly. The second Jacob is a handsome killer, the first a handsome weakling who must find the courage to resist his baser self. Bertolucci matches inspired plot points with arresting images, including visual film references and the bright color schemes that would later become his trademark.’ — letterboxd

Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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Tinto Brass L’Urlo (1968)
‘Drawing its title and a dash of inspiration from Allen Ginsberg’s famous beatnik classic, The Howl (L’urlo) is easily the most freewheeling and unjustly ignored title in the Tinto Brass canon, with plenty of the auteur’s own obsessions and stylistic flourishes congealing into an avant garde snapshot of late ’60s global unrest that still resonates today. Mixing anti-war sentiments with a flurry of rapid-fire pop culture references, atrocity footage, abundant nudity, and even oddball comedy, this oft-censored psychedelic madhouse has never before been seen in English and will blow away anyone ready to groove along with its unique, inspirational rhythms. Tina Aumont stars as Anita, a lovely young woman escaping the oppression of modern-day society in a globe-hopping travelogue that rivals anything by Alejandro Jodorowsky for sheer mind-melting strangeness. Brass himself admits there wasn’t really a script per se, as the film was shot more like a voyage with a vague framework for the actors; thus it’s a real “trip” in the truest movie sense, grabbing the viewer by the throat from the opening frames and never letting up for an hour and a half.’ — mondo-digital.com

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Philippe Garrel Le Lit de la Vierge (1969)
‘Filmed in the smoldered ashes of the failed social revolution as Garrel and a community of young artists from Zanzibar film (a film collective of like minded, radicalized artists financed by heiress Sylvina Boissonnas) abandoned the emblematic barricades of domestic protest and retreated to Africa to transfigure their ideological disappointment into subsumed cultural action through the creation of an intrinsically personal, revolutionary cinema, Le Lit de la vierge is, in a sense, the reconstitution of a fevered, post-traumatic creative manifesto – an impassioned, reflexive apologia composed in the fog of a drug-fueled delirium that not only reflected a not yet resigned sentiment of implicit denial over the failure of the revolution, but also served to reinforce the counter-culture generation’s delusive posture as alienated and discarded messianic ideologues who, nevertheless, continue to hold the keys to an ever-receding utopian paradise.’ — strictly film school

Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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Gian Luigi Polidoro Satyricon (1969)
‘Lusty adventures of two men and a transvestite young man in times of Rome’s Nero.’ — IMDB

the entire film

 

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Franco Brocani Necropolis (1970)
‘Brocani conjures together all your favourite European cultural and historical myth figures in order to attack the centuries of ‘sublimation’ that have produced our cities and their inhabitants. The gang’s all here: Frankenstein’s monster gropes towards the awareness that his mind is a universe; Attila, naked on a white horse, liberates his people from their ignominy; the ultra-caustic Viva bemoans the frustrations of married life and drifts into the elegiac persona of the Bloody Countess Bathory; Louis Waldon is a hip American tourist searching for the (missing) Mona Lisa. The range is extraordinary, from stand-up Jewish comedy to a kind of flea-market expressionism. Brocani’s approach is contemplative rather than agitational, which confounds the impatient; Gavin Bryars’ lovely Terry Riley-esque score matches the ambience exactly.’ — RareFilm

Trailer

Excerpt

Louis Waldon & Tina Aumont Behind the Scenes of Necropolis

 

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Sergio Martino Torso (1973)
‘Torso (Italian: I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale, lit. ‘The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence’) is an Italian giallo film directed by Sergio Martino. George Anderson of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette deemed the film “another display of softcore sex and seamy violence that might better have been kept abroad.” Joe Baltake of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote: “Blood flows freely and limbs detach easily, in Sergio Martino’s Torso, a disagreeable Italian import with—not surprisingly—little to recommend it.” The Los Angeles Times’s Linda Gross wrote that the film was a “lazy suspense movie” with a “disjointed and loose” screenplay.’ — collaged

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Alexander Whitelaw Lifespan (1975)
‘Cult icon Klaus Kinski features in this dark and intriguing existential thriller. He plays the mysterious “Swiss Man”, ruthless industrialist Nicolas Ulrich, who is obsessed with a search for the elixier of life. He tricks a young American scientist into joining him on his demonic quest. A quest that ends in suicide, death and madness. The story takes place in the atmospheric European city of Amsterdam. Its winding alleys and ancient canals trap the characters in a labyrinthine maze as they find themselves manipulated like figures on a giant chessboard. The film was controversial in its day for the extended bondage scene featuring female star Tina Aumont. This was cut in many countries, but is complete in this version. The brilliant soundtrack, unavailable for over 30 years, is by avant garde composer Terry Riley.’ — rarehorrordvds.com

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Roberto Rossellini Il messia (1975)
‘Virtually unknown outside of Italy, Messiah (Il Messia) is historically important as the last directorial effort of Roberto Rossellini. In retelling the life of Christ, Rosselini harks back to the humanistic style he’d utilized on his many Italian TV projects of the 1960s. The director has no intention of depicting Jesus as being the vessel of divine providence. The Man from Galilee is shown simply as one who is unusually moral and of spotless character — the sort of person who’d be a natural leader no matter who his Father was. Co-scripted by its director, Messiah was completed in 1975, but not given a general release until 1978.’ — Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Francesco Rosi Cadaveri eccellenti (1976)
‘Rosi called Illustrious Corpses “a trip through the monsters and monstrosities of power.” A detective thriller cast in the mold of a political exposé, or vice versa, it is the story of a mysterious killer (or killers) whose victims are judges, public prosecutors, and magistrates. The dogged, Marlowe-like detective who follows this morbid trail uncovers a nest of corruption at every cultural and political turn: every witness—indeed, every institution in Italian society—has a stake in the collapse of the judiciary. Rosi’s most despairing comment on absolute power and corruption is also his most stylistically distinguished. From the famous opening sequence in which the mummified elders stand upright in the catacombs, “Rosi shows such a majestic, ominous spatial sense in this movie that at times it seems to be an architectural fantasy about a country of the dead” (Pauline Kael). Lino Ventura as the melancholy detective is joined by a star cast including Tina Aumont, Fernando Rey, and Max von Sydow.’ — Pacific Film Archive

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Tinto Brass Salon Kitty (1976)
‘Salon Kitty is a 1976 erotic-war-drama film directed by Tinto Brass. The film was coproduced by Italy, France and West Germany. It is based on the novel of the same name by Peter Norden, covering the real life events of the Salon Kitty Incident, where the Sicherheitsdienst took over an expensive brothel in Berlin, had the place wire tapped and all the prostitutes replaced with trained spies in order to gather data on various members of the Nazi party and foreign dignitaries. It is considered among the progenitors of Nazisploitation genre. In the U.S., the film was edited to lighten the political overtones for an easier marketing as a sexploitation film and released under the title Madam Kitty with an X rating.’ — collaged

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Federico Fellini Casanova (1976)
‘Federico Fellini’s Casanova, which chronicles the life of its eponymous hero from shortly before his imprisonment in the Piombi in Venice to his old age in the service of Count Waldstein in Bohemia, is a remarkable and deeply affecting masterpiece. Filled with lavish, often peculiar, and highly stylized sets, ablaze with the ornate, vibrantly colored costumes worn by the actors, and suffused with a delicious sense of sadness tinged with a cold humor, the movie is consistently mesmerizing both visually and narratively. There is not a moment of his brilliantly realized film to which Fellini has not given a truly intoxicating loveliness. From its opening sequence depicting the celebration of the Doge’s marriage to the sea, in which a colossal statue of Venus is raised up from the waters of a canal amidst fireworks, while hosts of masked onlookers crowd the surrounding bridges and walkways, until its conclusion, in which the protagonist dances with a mechanical woman under a night sky, the director has created a work that is so astonishingly beautiful it is more like a revelation, in quick succession, of a series of paintings done by some great master than it is like most other films.’ — MOVIERAPTURE

Excerpt

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Jacques Richard Rebelote (1984)
‘The tale of a sad delinquent trying to overcome his miserable childhood to find success at love and life. It stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Christophe Bazzini, Olga Georges-Picot, Jacques Robiolles, and Tina Aumont.’ — collaged

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Jean Rollin Two Orphan Vampires (1997)
‘Rollin’s entire filmography, more or less, could be summarized as a poetical consideration of death, termination, and unreality, but coming to terms with his own pending death had a way of affecting how he regarded them (the film was undertaken just as he was diagnosed with kidney failure). Something previously conceptual and child-like, nostalgic and precious in Rollin’s work becomes more concrete and dimensional, unflinching and adult. When they commit one violent transgression against their kindly benefactor, the scene’s abrupt and awkward brutality recalls the best of Henri-Georges Clouzot.’ –Fab Press

Trailer

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Quelou Parente Marquis de Slime (1997)
‘Phoebe Legere wrote this rock n roll vampire classic. She plays a female wrestler with supernatural powers. The evil A and R vampire is played by Spaghetti Western star Michel Lemoine. Tina Aumont, daughter of Maria Montez appears as a sybilline spook in Pere Lachaise Cemetery.’ — Allo Cine

the entire film

 

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Roy Stuart Giulia (1999)
‘Giulia is an independent young woman who is prepared to offer her body and her spirit against all the religious taboos. The film was co-written by Joey Simas and Roy Stuart, and stars Laurent Abry, Elisa Ber, Tina Aumont, Tinto Brass, among others.’ — MUBI

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p.s. Hey. ** Laura, Hi to you! Oh, gosh, I’m happy that I said something that broke your prose open. The gif story was/is cool. I’m a solid audience. I think the gif has gotten relegated to the meme genre mostly, which is sad and disrespectful, but there you go. The only random/weird trip aspect was getting two flights cancelled in Chicago (our stopover) and getting stuck in a weird hotel in the middle of nowhere overnight then having our flight to Iowa City fucked by a disfunctioning plane that we had to exit and finally getting to IC eight hours after I was supposed to do a reading. Otherwise, the trip was pretty organised. I didn’t see your note to the troll guy, and I hope he found it interesting, but I wouldn’t have let him back in to respond if he’d tried. Laggy love back. ** rewritedept, Yeah, I thought you meant the ‘Rock Me Amadeus’ guy. I don’t know McClusky very well at all. The lyrics seem good, but I’m still too brain dead to parse them. I’ll try again tomorrow. I think my email’s the same. Your brain seems to be working very well. ** Adem Berbic, Hey. Oh, I think most of the IC artists’ stuff isn’t all that public yet. I’ll have to check. My brain is toast. Make readings sexy again … ‘again’? What does that mean? Does that mean adding a bunch of media or something? How is that sexy? I think I’m bored with ‘sexy’. I think things should try to be less sexy. I’m so sorry about the cat. But you see these videos on social media where cats come back after a weirdly long time in perfect shape, so I hope they’re not just AI generated shit for your sake. ** _Black_Acrylic, ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ is pretty killer. Happy about your football related happiness, man. Onwards and upwards. ** kenley, Hi! Oh, yeah, exciting IC stuff … I’m going to be able to wake up more before my brain can find and pass along those specifics. I’m still very cloudy. But I will. Newfoundland sounds exciting, cool. I’ll go look at your tumblr after I take a nap. Keep enjoying. ** jay, Meerkats are fascinating, yeah. I’ve never seen one in 3D. They seem like penguins for high IQ people or something. Piano! Nice. Yeah, my mom was a concert pianist she was younger, and she made me take piano lessons for quite a while, but I was too klutzy. We had this grand piano in our living room, and, when my mom got drunk and very depressed about giving up her apparently promising concert pianist career, she’d plunk down there and try to play ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ over and over for hours, and it was very disturbing. I feel very lucky that the blog only gets a troll once every few years, although I’m probably jinxing that. ** David Cady, David! Whoa, hi! Sure, I’ll write to you today. I’m very jet lagged at the moment so please excuse any haziness. But I will. Amazing to hear from you! I hope all’s really great with you. ** Brendan, You moved to NYC?! Holy moly. That’s big. That sounds good. Where are you living? What are you technically doing there? Wow. ** Steve, Hi. I’m too lagged to be analytical in any kind of interesting way. There’s the fact that IC is an oasis of leftism and braininess in an ultra-red state. That probably helps. Graham Swon … not that I know of. Maybe he was at the screening. There were a lot of people there, and I didn’t get to talk with most of them. It was pretty warm here when I arrived, but now it’s chilly-ish again. ** Carsten, Hi. Lots of trouble at the airport, but not related to ICE. We did see some ICE guys wandering around. Man, that sounds just awful: your malady. So sorry, I hope it’s the kind of thing that dies really young. Unlike Thompson, Reed wasn’t/isn’t a showman. I think that’s part of it. ** HaRpEr //, Hi. Early Reed is so great. ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ and ‘The Freelance Pallbearer’ are especially way up there. Exactly about the far more complicated power in Sade. Readers make the things they’re reading, and film viewers just absorb a pre-existing thing and react/adjust. That’s a real challenge in making films. How to try to try to circumvent that. So happy you liked Ed’s book. I don’t think I’ve read ‘Humiliation’ although I really like Koestenbaum. Hm, I’ll get it. Thanks re: my jet lag. Hopefully by Monday I’ll be right as rain as people mysteriously say. ** Uday, Hi, U. Florida, wow. I never imagine people going there except to go to the theme parks. Iowa City was lovely. It itself is very small and quiet and uneventful apart from the university-related artistic outbursts, but I really enjoyed it. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Oh, no, your enthusiasm helped wake me up. Definitely submit your piece! That’s great! How wonderful to have a teacher who recognises and supports your talent. There were a couple of teachers at my college that did that re: me, and I honestly don’t know whether I would have had the confidence to keep writing if they hadn’t. Yeah, there were technical problems with the Florida screening, so they had to reschedule it. No, we’re not going to that one. All the screenings we’re going to for the next while are in Europe. ** Okay. This weekend you are invited to explore the oeuvre of the wonderful and idiosyncratic French actor Tina Aumont, and I suggest you do. See you hopefully more wakefully on Monday.