AustLit

The final film from surrealist Dusan Marek, Glide if You Can was made in collaboration with the students from the Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart. According to Alex Gerbaz,

It has a nightmarish, funereal quality, full of ghostly figures and unexplained deaths. Characters appears and disappear out of the blue, followed and watched dispassionately by others. Bodies are hurtled over rocky cliffs, or seen floating in a stream. A man tumbles down sand dunes; a frightened woman flees an unseen force, running first in one direction then the opposite way; four pallbearers cooperate wordlessly among the ruins of a castle. The visual eeriness is compounded by a dramatic organ score that makes occasional abrupt shifts in tone -- thunderous and abrasive one moment, sombre and peaceful the next. (p.3)

Source:

Gerbaz, Alex. 'Innovations in Australian Cinema: An Historical Outline of Australian Experimental Film', Journal of the National Film and Sound Archives 3.1 (2008): 1-12.

The second experimental full-length film by Czech-born, Australian-based surrealist Dusan Marek, following from 1967's Cobweb on a Parachute. According to Alex Gerbaz in 'Innovations in Australian Cinema', And the Word Was Made Flesh

contains no dialogue or voice-over narration (except for a brief prologue statement). The tone is lighter than Cobweb, but the series of events is more intricate and bizarre. One of the most striking shots (repeated with variations) shows a bearded anthropologist writhing and falling down sand dunes; filmed in reverse, he seems to be falling up instead of down. The camera's poetic use of framing and space, its exploration of the nooks inside empty houses, and its occasional unexpected movements from side to side help create a compelling visual style. The music, while used sparsely, adds a rich texture: a flute-and-guitar melody in a strange scale starts up suddenly to indicate madness or obsession; a percussive tune with rattling bottles and light bells accompanies the pursuit of the anthropologist by two faceless men. Occasionally, the film evokes Woman in the Dunes (Teshigahara, 1964), with its desert landscape, erotic, abstract images of locking bodies, minimalist avant-garde music, and intermittent shots of spiders and insects.

In his overview of Australian and New Zealand horror films, Robert Hood says of And the Word Was Made Flesh,

A surrealistic experimental film intended to show, according to Marek, "man's attempt to retain his inside freedom ... and not be moulded by the outside". A scientist finds a cocoon. An idealised woman comes out of it. She is harassed by two faceless monsters who are collecting specimens for a museum. She and the scientist make love on a vast stretch of sand, while a killer stalks them. Make sense of it if you can.

Sources:

Gerbaz, Alex. 'Innovations in Australian Cinema: An Historical Outline of Australian Experimental Film'. Journal of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia 3.1 (2008): 1-12.

Hood, Robert. 'Killer Koalas: Australian (and New Zealand) Horror Films'. Tabula Rasa (http://www.tabula-rasa.info/AusHorror/OzHorrorFilms2.html). (Sighted: 29/6/2012)

The first full-length film by Czech-born, Australian-based surrealist Dusan Marek. The National Library of Australia describes Cobweb on a Parachute as follows:

Combining animation with live action this is one of the few truly surreal works to emerge in the Australian cinema, an intensely personal reflection, by Czech artist Dusan Marek, on the importance of maintaining an inner freedom. Marek is the film's solitary character - the artist and his alter-ego who wears a de Chirico-like mask. The spare commentary poetically alludes to the artist's conflict with his subconscious culminating in liberation. The images are assembled in a manner akin to music. Marek hoped that this would allow viewers to maintain contact with their imaginations.

According to Alex Gerbaz, in his 'Innovations in Australian Cinema', the film was shot on offcuts of film provided by Fontana Films, after they hired Marek to produce animated advertisements:

Although Cobweb was left 'unfinished' -- his original print went missing before he could add superimpositions and other effects -- Marek worked on it for a full year, and the resulting 1-hour film is one of his most ambititous and personal works. From its haunting opening shots of a man (Marek) standing rigid in front of a door, Cobweb possesses an enigmatic and dreamlike atmosphere. Marek's character is followed by a man with a featureless, wooden head. He is initially afraid, but the thought keeps occurring to him: 'If you kill me, you will die.' The two individuals are inseparable, a fact alluded to by the compelling image of two snails twisting around each other, accompanied by a drumming sound like a heartbeat. After a time, the idea of having a mysterious double becomes less frightening: 'Suddenly', Marek narrates in a thick accent, 'I stop being conscious of his presence.' The film now makes a significant shift, as we see a very relaxed and casually dressed Marek in his studio, looking over storyboards and animation cut-outs. The wooden-headed man appears again out of the blue, but Marek is calm rather than horrified. He puts his double to work, showing him how to operate the film equipment. A short cut-out animation sequence follows, after which Marek inserts a key into a heavy spherical object. 'He exists only within me', Marek narrates, and proclaims himself 'free', part of nature, and 'full of excitement!'

Sources:

Gerbaz, Alex. 'Innovations in Australian Cinema: An Historical Outline of Australian Experimental Film'. Journal of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia 3.1 (2008): 1-12.

National Library of Australia record (http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/10601229?versionId=12364958). (Sighted: 29/6/2012)

A collaboration between surrealist Dusan Marek and director Tim Burstall, The Magic Trumpet is an animated film (using the style of cut-out animation on which Marek focused in the early 1960s) recounting the story of a magic trumpet that brings fame and fortune to an old tramp.

A short film made by surrealist Dusan Marek after he settled in Adelaide, Windmills is based on drawings made by Adelaide schoolchildren, which Marek then animated. Alex Gerbaz describes it as 'a bright colour animation film with dark undertones':

Marek creates a surreal tale of a small boy who goes exploring at night. The townsfolk are negatively affected by his nocturnal presence: a weightlifter is struck and killed by an arrow, and his weights become light and float away; someone carrying a rock suddenly finds it floating upwards and then it lands on his head; another man shrinks into his hat and disappears. Finally a ship crashes with the boy on board, but he is revived by birds. (p.2)

Source:

Gerbaz, Alex. 'Innovations in Australian Cinema: An Historical Outline of Australian Experimental Film', Journal of the National Film and Sound Archives 3.1 (2008): 1-12.

One of the longer films by surrealist Dusan Marek, made after his return to Sydney from New Guinea, Adam and Eve is an exploration of the biblical creation myth.

According to Alex Gerbaz,

it depicts the creation of the first man and woman out of dots, circles and lines. The couple have scores of children, distribute the little dots all over the place, and reserve a few to put into their pram. Suddenly, the prams starts to shake violently and there is an enormous explosion. Marek's face flashes on screen, after which we see him as creator/animator reconstructing the world. The soundtrack, semi-improvised with Ian Davidson, is one of Marek's most inventive, incorporating muffled orchestral music that floats in and out, strange bird-like noises, backwards tones, ominous drumming and whirring, and a woman singing. (p.2)

The film is made in the cut-out animation on which Marek was focusing in the early 1960s.

Source:

Gerbaz, Alex. 'Innovations in Australian Cinema: An Historical Outline of Australian Experimental Film', Journal of the National Film and Sound Archives 3.1 (2008): 1-12.

A short animated film by surrealist Dusan Marek. According to the National Film and Sound Archive, 'Animated short story about the creation of and romance between girl and boy dot. They get together, and after a problem with a rectangle, they have triplets and live happily ever after. They are stick figures over a stone wall background.'

A short animated film from surrealist Dusan Marek. The plot is described by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) as follows: 'While a man is fishing, two men go over the wall landing in a boat below. The fisherman follows the other two down, but lands in the boat head first causing a leak. They all sink. The end.'

Though the NFSA does not make it explicit that this film is based on a nursery rhyme (as it does for Marek's other nursery-rhyme films), the title and the NFSA's description of the plot strongly suggest that the film is based on the English nursery rhyme commonly called either 'The Three Wise Men of Gotham' or 'The Three Sailors of Gotham', which plays on the reputed foolishness of the inhabitants of the village of Gotham, in Nottinghamshire:

Three wise men of Gotham,
They went to sea in a bowl,
And if the bowl had been stronger
My song had been longer.

A short animated film by surrealist Dusan Marek. This is one of Marek's more obscure films, and even the National Film and Sound Archive can only describe it as 'Cut out animation of a sailing adventure'.

A short, animated film by Dusan Marek, based on a nursery rhyme. According to the National Film and Sound Archive's catalogue entry for this film, it depicts 'a feud between Taffy and another man, who ends up setting Taffy's clothes on fire and getting blown up '. Based on this description and the title, the film is most likely a variant of the anti-Welsh English nursery rhyme 'Taffy Was a Welshman', which appears in a number of variants.

A short, animated version of a nursery rhyme. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

The specific nursery rhyme on which this film is based is likely the following (or some variant thereof):

Pick a Back Up To Bed

Up the wooden hill to blanket fair,

What shall we have when we get there?

A bucket of water and a pennyworth of hay,

Gee up dobbin all the way!

A short, animated version of the English nursery rhyme 'Old Mother Hubbard'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

A short animated film based on a nursery rhyme. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

The particular nursery rhyme on which the film is based is also obscure, though generally linked to a nursery rhyme of uncertain origin that begins 'There was an old woman, as I've heard tell', in which a woman, falling asleep on the highway after taking her eggs to market, has her petticoats cut off up to her knees by a passing peddlar, and suffers a crisis of identity.

A short, animated version (using stop-motion animation and paper cut-outs) of the English nursery rhyme 'Jack and Jill'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

A short, animated film by surrealist Dusan Marek in which, according to the National Film and Sound Archive, 'King Arthur bakes a cake and feeds people.' Like Marek's other films from this period, the animation is stop motion, using paper cut-outs.

An experimental short film by surrealist Dusan Marek, made after his departure from New Guinea and arrival in Adelaide. According to the National Film and Sound Archive, 'An old man smoking a pipe tells a story.'

A short, animated version of the English nursery rhyme 'Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

The National Film and Sound Archive lists a separate nursery-rhyme film by Marek called 'Piper and Pigs'; since there is no nursery rhyme by this name, it seems likely that this is another variant or another print of Marek's 'Tom the Piper's Son.'

A short, animated version of the anonymous nursery rhyme 'The Old Woman Who Bought a Little Pig', a cumulative tale in which a woman seeks to get her recalcitrant pig home from market by asking a dog to bite the pig, a stick to beat the dog, a fire to burn the stick, and so on. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.

A short, animated film, listed by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) as part of Dusan Marek's series of films based on nursery rhymes. As with all films in this series, the NFSA describes this as a 'Cut out animation of the nursery rhyme of the same name'. Since 'Mother Goose' is more commonly the putative narrator or collector of nursery rhymes, rather than the protagonist of her own rhyme, this leaves the content of this film rather obscure.

An animated film version (made uisng stop-motion animation and paper cut-outs) of the English nursery rhyme 'Hey Diddle Diddle'. Little information is available on this film, which is one of Marek's more obscure productions.