Bilingual? No problems if you’re not, the important sections here are Kenneth Anger’s, where the Magus of American Cinema tells his story from Fireworks to Lucifer Rising, via Bobby Beausoleil, Mick Jagger and Aleister Crowley, in this rare interview with French television from 2003.
In this fascinating but (far too) short clip, Alan Moore gives an introduction to the work of artist Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956), who he describes as “one of the most over-looked figures in British art history”. The obituaries for Spare’s death remarked “England had lost one of its best ever nude study artist.” Nearly sixty years after his death, little is known about the artist outside of knowledgeable and specialist circles.
But Spare wasn’t only an incredible artist, as Moore points out, he was also “possibly the greatest English magician of the twentieth century.”
“I think that Magic offers the artist a new way of looking at their consciousness, and of looking at where they get their ideas from.”
Spare was an artistic prodigy, who was the youngest exhibitor at the Royal Academy, London. At the same time, he was developing his own esoteric beliefs, which brought him into contact with Aleister Crowley, and a relationship of sorts began, with Spare contributing illustrations to Crowley’s magazine Equinox. However, the friendship foundered and Spare alluded to Crowley in his book The Book of Pleasure:
“Others praise ceremonial Magic, and are supposed to suffer much Ecstasy! Our asylums are crowded, the stage is over-run! Is it by symbolising we become the symbolised? Were I to crown myself King, should I be King? Rather should I be an object of disgust or pity. These Magicians, whose insincerity is their safety, are but the unemployed dandies of the Brothels.”
Yet Spare did not give up on magic completely, rather he began his own particular mix of “repressed magic”, which fed directly into his art work. Spare became known for his “automatic drawing” - allowing himself to act as a medium to spirits to guide his pencil, creating inter-twined images of figures and faces on a page.
There are many different stories (some more incredible than others) about Spare and his involvement with magic and the spirit world. He was said to have the power of divination and premonition, and could accurately predict events long before they took place. He was also know for his dialog with “spirits” and “demons”, and after a fire at his studio, he fell under a mysterious ailment which left him unable to paint for 5 years.
Spare’s work had some odd admirers, in particular Adolf Hitler, who asked him to paint his portrait. Spare refused believing Hitler to be evil, and if he were a Superman, Spare was claimed to have said in reply, then he would prefer to live as an animal.
A biography on Austin Osman Spare by Phil Baker was published last year, and is now something of a collector’s item, while a small exhibition of his work was recently held in Glasgow.
Previously on DM
And now for our scheduled interruption courtesy of Mr. Austin Osman Spare
I haven’t been this amused in a long time. I suspect I’ll receive some shit for posting.
“Pentagram Sam” by Da Grimston & Mist-E.
Via Jason Louv‘s Facebook
Jimmy Page has revealed via his Facebook page, that he will release his music for Lucifer Rising next week.
In a “special announcement” Page said:
On March 20th, the Spring Equinox 2012, the title music for Lucifer Rising and Other Sound Tracks will have its premiere and release.
The title music, along with other musical pieces recorded at my home studio in the early Seventies, have been revisited, remixed and released for the first time.
This is a musical diary of avant-garde compositions and experiments, one of which was to appear on the film Lucifer Rising.
The collection has been exhumed and is now ready for public release. This will be available exclusively on the website.
There will be a standard release on heavyweight vinyl.
In addition there will be a special run of 418 numbered copies. The first 93 copies will be signed and numbered.
There are liner notes and commentary to each track. The tracks are:
Side One1) Lucifer Rising - Main Track
Side Two
1) Incubus
2) Damask
3) Unharmonics
4) Damask - Ambient
5) Lucifer Rising - Percussive Return
Jimmy Page, March 2012
As you all know, Page was originally asked to write the music for the film by Kenneth Anger, but various difficulties saw their collaboration fall apart. Anger later claimed he could turn the guitarist into a toad or a statue of gold.
While Page’s soundtrack has been available as a bootleg for some years, this is its first official release, which you can purchase via Jimmy Page’s website
This is what the bootleg version sounds like:
And what Kenneth Anger said after being asked just one more question about Jimmy Page.
The Source, an extraordinary new documentary feature about the “Source Family,” a little-known hippie counterculture enclave living in Los Angeles in the 1970s, premiered at the SXSW Film festival this year. Co-directed by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos, The Source intimately examines the lives of a group of spiritual seekers who came to follow a charismatic but deeply flawed polygamous guru who opened one of the very first vegetarian restaurants in America. The Source restaurant was a Sunset Strip landmark for over two decades, attracting clientele like Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Willam Morris super agents and various other Tinseltown notables with its healthy food and good-looking staff.
Who were the Source Family?
Jodi: They were a utopian group of 140 beautiful young people who, for a time in the 70s, lived together in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills and explored the cosmos with a man named Father Yod, a controversial restaurateur turned spiritual leader. They had a popular vegetarian restaurant on the Sunset strip that movie stars and musicians frequented and they had their own rock band.
What was it about Father Yod that was so special that he could attract followers so easily?
Jodi: He was a wizard, a war hero, an outlaw, a conceptual genius, a father figure and a friend. He was fearless and he had a sense of humor. He showed those who were seeking how to make magic real in their own lives. And the ladies loved him.
Didn’t Woody Allen use the commune’s health food restaurant as the backdrop for some anti-Los Angeles sentiment in Annie Hall?
Maria: Indeed he did. It’s an iconic scene because it defines the great polarity at the time between the two coasts. The Source was an epicenter and represented the West Coast’s fixation on health and mysticism, which his character, “Alvy Singer,” a cynical New Yorker, perceived as self-indulgent and superficial.
How did you come to make a film about The Source?
Jodi: While I was helping to put together the book about the group (The Source, Process Media 2007) with Isis and Electricity Aquarian, Isis suggested we shoot our interviews with family members on video. Once Isis’ showed me her mind-blowing Source archives with the Super 8 home movies, color slides, scrapbooks, and hundreds of hours of audio recordings, I knew we had to make a film. I then brought in Maria, a talented and experienced commercial director and a longtime friend, to help bring things to the next level. The universe unfolded from there.
Are the Source Family still together, in some form, in 2012?
Maria: They’re no longer an active family— they dispersed in 1977 after Yod’s death. But the internet has reconnected many of them and they also have occasional Source Family reunions. The band reunited in 2007 when the book came out, and since then they’ve toured nationally and released new three albums. While the Source Family members all have their own lives now, it’s clear when you talk to them that most still have one foot in Yod-land.
Below, an exclusive clip from The Source.
Here’s something for you folks with a taste for the bizarre: a video mix of Indonesian horror films and garage/psyche rock from Southeast Asia.
Look Back In Angkor featuring music by Srei Sothear, Sin Sisamouth, Prum Manh, Meas Samon, The Gang Of Harry Roesli, Aka, and lots of tracks by artists unknown that appeared on rare homemade audio cassettes.
Stiv getting the V.I.P. treatment at The Starwood, Los Angeles. Photo: Jenny Lens.
Lords Of The New Church appearance on this 1982 edition of Nickelodeon’s ‘Live Wire’ is really quite extraordinary. Stiv Bators seems in a fugue state (probably hadn’t slept) as he talks about dreams, trance writing and the mystical act of creating music. And the young female audience not only gets it, they’re intrigued and curious. As Edgar Allen Poe is evoked, a sweet and acrid scent of blossoming gothettes fills the air and the cathode ray tube transmitting the vibe flickers like the shadows of falling angels bisecting the rays of a dead moon. Yes, these pubescent blond women will be going home and dying their hair jet black tonight and in the afternoon when they wake they will see themselves as they truly are: trash, beautiful unadulterated trash, and they will go forth and become slaves to the Lords of rock and work in strip joints to buy their heavy metal lovermen new guitars and tight leather pants. Yes, ‘Live Wire’ was the secret spawning ground for a generation of enslaved rock bitches. Nickelodeon, the Devil’s network
In the mid-80s my band was on a tour of West Coast clubs that was one day behind The Lords tour of the same. We’d arrive the day after The Lords had played the club the night before. As part of Stiv’s stage show he would place his head in a noose and swing out over the audience. The following day when my band would arrive at the club there was usually a piece of cut rope still dangling from a ceiling beam. Like Hansel and Gretel, Stiv had left his trail behind him, a lethally impotent necklace of hemp
Stiv Bators was one of the sweetest men I’ve ever known. He was fearless, reckless and foolish. He thought his body was immortal but a taxi cab in Paris proved him wrong.
It’s rare these days for a film to genuinely creep me out. After decades of watching horror movies, the great, the good and the intolerably bad, it takes a lot to shake me up. So when I tell you that Ben Wheatley’s Kill List got under my skin like one of those leech-like critters in David Cronenberg’s They Came From Within, it’s both a warning and a recommendation. Kill List should come with its own rating FYU (fuck you up).
Kill List manages to to do something that only really good art does: it is the thing it is about. This hellaciously unnerving film is as evil as the evil it depicts. When I reflect on some of the most disturbing films I’ve seen - Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist - I recall them not as compositions of various crafts - acting, direction, etc. - I re-experience them in their totality, a dark brand seared into the folds of my brain matter. These are not mere movies, they’re a form of magic, as arcane as alchemy and as modern as Blu Ray. They deposit the Devil’s cash in your memory bank, where it gains interest over the years, but the only checks you can write against it are in your nightmares.
Kill List has a mindbending plot, fine acting, direction and a superb score. You can find out more about the film online. The critical chatter is mostly positive. But this is not a review. It is, as I said, a warning and a recommendation. For fans of the kind of horror that sinks into you like the fangs of a blood-famished vampire, Wheatley’s infernal concoction should do the trick.
With a budget of nearly 2 million kronor, Häxan (The Witches or Witchcraft Through The Ages) is the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever. Written and directed by Benjamin Christensen this classic horror film from 1922 was partly inspired by Christensen’s reading of Malleus Maleficarum, the 15th century guide to witch-finding. Christensen presents his film as a faux documentary, examining the hysteria around witchcraft, the occult and demonic possession.
The film splits into 4 sections, each with its own theme. The first examines demons and ideas of Hell; the second is series of stories about witchcraft and the use of magic - Christensen makes an appearance as Satan; the third part is set in the Middle Ages and follows a woman accused of witchcraft, who under torture admits to charges of witchcraft; the fourth floats the idea witchcraft and demonology are a treatable form of mental illness.
It’s a more than interesting film, one for a winter’s night - especially if you can stand to read all the caption cards (an edited version was released in 1965 with commentary from William Burroughs, which is easier on the eye) - and is famed for its incredible and powerful dramatic sequences of demons, witches, occult practices and Satan.
Flying Lotus and Harry Smith, two great tastes that taste great together!
Tomorrow night, our friends at Cinefamily present this inspired avant garde pairing:
Reprising an unforgettable show commissioned for the Ann Arbor Film Festival, L.A.’s own Flying Lotus joins Animation Breakdown for a unique screening of animator/folk music archivist/string figure enthusiast/culture hound extraordinaire Harry Smith’s 66-minute animated collage film Heaven and Earth Magic. The marriage of Smith’s ‘50s folk art mindset and Flying Lotus’ genre-defying 21st century sound may seem at odds, but they are both equally brilliant alchemical cut-and-paste samplers of world culture—and as kindred as spirits can get. Heaven and Earth Magic is a testament to the ability of animators to act as magicians, breathing life into even the most static, eyeworn 19th-century imagery—and as Flying Lotus contributes audio from disparate yet familiar sources (drum machine, turntable, laptop, synthesizer), two giants of sampling unite across time, and Smith’s playful experiments are imbued with a new, positively cosmic energy. This is one-of-a-kind live pairing you are not likely to see again!
Tickets $12, Tuesday, February 28th, 8:00pm at Cinefamily
Below, an excerpt from Harry Smith’s “Heaven and Earth Magic.” If you aren’t lucky enough to live in LA (I love saying that) as you’re watching it, maybe listen to Cosmogramma?