Pip Chodorov
Free Radicals
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Add rightsFormat DVD Interzone
Original format HD, 16mm
Year 2011
Language(s) English, French
Artist(s) Pip Chodorov
Subtitles French, English, Spanish, Serbian, Lithuanian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Czech
Booklet 44 pages (French, English)
Running time 83 min
Films
FREE RADICALS - A HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM (2010) 78'
FILMSTUDIE by Hans Richter (1926) 5'
GHOSTS BEFORE BRAKFAST by Hans Richter (1928) 9'
MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON by Maya Deren (1943) 18'
CASSIS by Jonas Mekas (1966) 4'
HARE KHRISHNA by Jonas Mekas (1966) 4'
A COLOUR BOX by Len Lye (1935) 3'
PARTICLES IN SPACE by Len Lye (1957) 3'
SYMMETRICKS by Stan Vanderbeek (1972) 6'
SCIENCE FRICTION by Stan Vanderbeek (1959) 10'
Description
"Here's a film that shines first and foremost through its casting: Hans Richter, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Maurice Lemaitre and other "star" filmmakers of experimental cinema (mainly American, up through the 1970s) parade here in all their majesty—without false modesty (their frankness and boldness are on the contrary astonishing, sometimes funny) but with the obvious pleasure of being in turn recorded and projected, heard."
— Les Cahiers du cinéma
"Touching and personal, this documentary—which will serve as a guide to all those tempted to dive into this era—extends its approach. The 'free radicals' referenced in the title are those artists who, in the 1920s and then in the 1970s, pulled cinema toward experimental visual poetry. [...] It pays beautiful tribute to this fringe of cinema too often reduced to a hermetic citadel when it is rather a space open to all winds, where chance, bricolage, and humor have often played a major role."
— Le Monde