Sunday 13 October 2013

Witchcraft wages war on sanity

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


13 October

At least, of the two shorts screened before Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968 version), the second made it no longer possible to desire to watch / hear any more, even with the (admittedly minimal) enticement of more of William Burroughs, now as narrator. I am sure that the rarity of being able to see this projected* might have tempted some to proceed beyond around ten minutes…

When I exited from the screening, and was waiting for my companion, another dazed person who had come out asked me how much more there was, and could not conceive of around a further hour. Tellingly, he also commented that he would understand if they used The Cut-Ups (1967) at Guantánamo Bay, as he would tell everything that he knew :

Towers Open Fire (1963) had intercut footage to defy one to tell oneself any more than a basic story, which is what the Festival programme called a ‘vibrant mix of exotic symbols and playful violence’, the latter phrase being an attempted oxymoron, but I have no recollection in relation to what.

That purgative effect is in no small part due to the paralytic diuretic that was to follow, with its soundtrack that was so unbelievable in being irritated that it made a mere twelve minutes seem like an eternity, with repetition without respite of words such as yes hello ? (or was it hello yes ?), which only stopped to give way to such others as Is the effect still subsisting ? or How does that feel ?.

I have no idea whether the film ‘punches straight for the optic nerve’, because the auditory overload left little desire to look at the screen : my impression, before the intense audio left me internally screaming in the hope that it would cease, was that it was qualitatively more of the same, not flashing, multi-layered film frames and sequences, but a provocatively pointless jumble.

I have seen and heard William Burroughs now. I have no further need of him in the near future, I fear…


End-notes

* I have no doubt that it is on YouTube somewhere.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

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