In the 1950s, television combined film with the radio and the log-burning fire: a device emitting light, security and nightmares. Now, the laptop and headphones combine the film with the radio and the codex: for the first time, private viewing has become a widely assessable option.
People curl up with their laptops on their beds during long winter nights, peruse YouTube in outdoor cafes, or even in the carrels of libraries. And the dingier movie theaters become—the theater experience is no longer tolerable except for grand openings, cult sensations or silent film revivals—the more attractive the laptop proves to be.
Laptops also accommodate awkward film genres that the public never learned how to consume. The short film, for instance, has been revitalized, if not manufactured, to frivolous excess due to Internet viewers.
Old shorts crawl out of the woodwork, finally coming to audiences with appropriate attention spans.
So this week, in honor of the laptop, the Internet archive and the new vogue of the short film, I will highlight a few favorites that we can all watch on YouTube without having to suffer in theater and without paying a dime.
You can find, for instance, Czech animator Karel Zeman's feature length "The Fabulous World of Jules Verne" (1959) and "The Fabulous Baron Munchhausen" (1961).
The set design of the former was inspired by the illustrations of Gustave Dore in which living actors move about an engraven world of Victorian steampunk mechanical oddities.
Setting the standards for Czech animators to come, Zeman deploys cardboard, clay, toy-models and live actors with spectacular, yet subtle, layering effects which seldom seem hokey. Zeman's "Munchhausen" updates the Baron's adventures to the age of cosmonauts and introduces other famous moon travelers to the braggart's retinue, such as Cyrano de Bergerac.
You can find several short films of contemporary Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, a philosophic pervert whose films undo the distinction between organic and inorganic life.
Soccer fans should definitely begin with the antic clay mayhem of "Virile Games" (1988) and experimental gastronomes should turn to the three-part series "Food" (1992). Lovers of clay, meat, bone, Europeana and artsy solipsism couldn't find a better match.
Jan Lenica, a Polish graphic designer and cartoonist, is responsible for bringing Max Ernst collage books to life. His delightful, short "Labyrinth" (1963) features, among other man-animal hybrids, a top-hat donning walrus that might not be destined to fly.
Samuel Beckett's short film entitled "Film" (1965) stars none other than dream collaborator Buster Keaton and undertakes a cruel, scrupulous inspection of the medium like only an Irish ascetic could.
The camera, or rather Keaton's dislodged eyeball, accosts pedestrians and pursues the actor through a city of ash and gloom, recasting the audience as a mutant, godlike subjectivity.
Left Bank or French New Wave's invisible superstar Chris Marker's "La Jetee" (1962) is a brilliant slideshow incorporating high contrast photographs of war-ruined France and the Florence Zoological Museum in the 60s.
A meditation on memory worthy of W.G. Sebald, this film went on to become the source material for Terry Gilliam's far inferior "12 Monkeys" (which you cannot get on YouTube).
With a runtime of 28 minutes, "La Jetee" is ideal for study breaks. You won't return to the same paper. Promise.