Seven Animated Collage Films (1957-1965) Stan VanDerBeek

Who, What, How 1957, 16mm, black and white, sound, 8 min. An animated collage film, a landmark in the beginning of social surrealism and pop art in 1957. Wheeeeeels #1 1958, 16mm black and white, sound, 5 min. A companion piece to Wheeeels No. 2, exploring more of the highways and by-ways of “American on Wheels“ with the filmmaker’s gentle surgery on the American pop-consciousness very much in evidence. Wheeeeels #2 1958, 16mm, black and white, sound, 5 min. “Dedicated to Detroit and subtitled ’America on wheels.’ A fantasy farce farce on the car of everyday life. Everything is a vehicle, life is in motion, motion is the means, the automation is the mean mania of today.“ S.V. Skullduggery 1960, 16mm, black and white, sound, 5 min. Double exposure and other methods are used to include animated collage “live“ newsreel footage, mixing the eye with live scenes and unlive scenes, to jibe at world so-called leaders. Breathdeath 1963, 16mm, black and white, sound, 14:33 min. Dedicated to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. A surrealistic fantasy based on the 15th century woodcuts of the dance of the dead. A film experiment that deals with the photoreality and the surrealism of life. It is a collage-animation that cuts up photos and newsreel film and reassembles them, producing an image that is a mixture of unexplainable fact (Why is Harpo Marx playing a harp in the middle of a battlefield?) with the inexplicable act (Why is there a battlefield?). It is a black comedy, a fantasy that mocks at death ... a parabolic parable. Awards: Bell Telephone Prize; Third Experimental Film Competition, Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium, 1964; Midwest Film Festival, 1964; Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1964. A Dam Rib Bed 1964, 16mm, black and white, silent, 2 screens, 15 min., “A two screen Dream/Film/Farce/Sity about sleeps-two-sides-the Dream-Beast, animated trick photography combined into a knifed dream with a sexual dreams edge. A movie mural, based on the gender question or sexus dream films.“ - Stan VanDerBeek See, Saw, Seems 1965, 16mm, black and white, sound, 9:06 min. “Juxtaposed to what we see... is what we think we is, the memory of dream is as real as the dream itself, but it is completely different from the dream. This film is an experiment in animation, in which the eye of the viewer travels deeper and deeper into each scene, finding new relationships and visual metaphors in what appears at first sight, a simple scene. Symbolic intention is the mother of symbolic is, sight you you think you are“ S.V.