Marinetti (1969) [N/A]
Gallery Unavailable
Featuring:
Deborah Allard, Charlie Brown, Lee Casey
Directed by:
Albie Thoms
Release Date:
June 19, 1969
Original Title:
Marinetti
Genres:
Documentary | Music
Production Companies:
UBU Films
Production Countries:
Australia
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 85
Albie Thoms' Marinetti was the culmination of the synthetic environments that the UBU group had pioneered in Australia; festive public 'happenings' that combined the energy and volume of creative rock and jazz with the mesmeric effect of multi-dimensional lightshows. Another kind of culmination: Marinetti records most of the principal collaborators in the UBU film group, like Aggy Read and the Perrys. Uniquely valuable as a document of Australia's late 1960s counter-culture, the soundtrack provides the best indication of the unrestrained liberty that bands like Tully and the John Sangster Underground band some of whose members perform on this recording were famously achieving in their improvisations of the period.
philosophical ideas go together with boring quotations of lovers and friends through life while we witness total blackness, white flashes and images of naked women through the past of the main character. references to poetry, paintings and daily pleasures are basely the main items of conversation together with admiration to fascist ideology. the story is nothing more but (three??) drunks speaking to one another, bluffing about their (love) life. it wouldn't be that dull if it was a bit interesting. and yet, it's this lack on fascinating items that's so mind-blowing. how is it the stupid things are always the most impressing ones? perhaps it's the combination of beautiful (naked) women and music on freezing and re-freezing photographs that's captivating that much. the conversations are worth listening to either, especially the protagonist's vision on sex with friends (and this for a movie from 1969!), it really entered my mind completely. besides the naked pleasures and sexual references between the drunks, we find lots of posters of porn flicks and photographers at work near the presence of the same beautiful women with good records on the background and tripping images mixed between each other the way Kenneth Anger did this in Lucifer Rising, Jack Smith in Scotch Tape or Andy Warhol in Chelsea Girls. actually, the whole movie could be described as one great acid trip. is there any hidden meaning in this film, like the director's opinion over some matters?? well, we see lots of female faces over female bodies and female hobbies. it's all females and girls through one another. the pictures of the kids throughout the women situations show the misunderstandings Abie Thoms had as a kid, maybe Marinetti was his way to deal with his childhood problems, expressed with the very weird, hairy male figures in this picture and the naked women all over. seduction leads to nakedness leads to sex lead to children to seduction and all over: Marinetti is a film about life, as it states itself: 'life in art'. I have no doubts about it that David Lynch based his Inland Empire on this flick, for soon everything turns out to be a real urban nightmare... this kind of love is pretty masochistic. sexual horror and mechanical teasers, it's all possible in Albie Thoms' "Marinetti" (but no idea what the title's all about). one thing is quite obvious, Thomas was a big Brakhage fan, and a bit of Deren and Akerman can be found in him as well. Marinetti proves this all, but I do doubt if I would ever have the patience to watch this video-music reference mix again.
