¶ Short of the Day #105: The Magic Sun

Perception de Ambiguity · #1

The Magic Sun (Phill Niblock, 1966)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsul3g ... -sun_music

or on YT in 2 parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhSEFWk15WM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIq6Nd4zqIE

Carmel1379 · #2

Has roots in 1920s European Avant-Garde, film reversal, the tradition of associating cool black and white photography with jazz (there's even a short film called 'Jammin' the Blues') and fascination with indigenous instruments. But it seems like its progenitors did more stimulating work, since I wasn't so taken by it, visually I found it a bit too unfocused to couple well with the music, even for a free jazz piece.

Perception de Ambiguity · #3

I think of it as a performance video in which the visuals are an illustration of the music with its stark black and white photography being used like the minimal animation of an Oskar Fischinger, Walter Ruttmann, or Hans Richter film. Given that it works with live action material I think it's forgivable if it may not be as spot-on and expressive as the animated films.

rnilsson19 · #4

Sun Ra

Ebbywebby · #5

I'm hardly an expert but, as yet, I've never heard a Sun Ra piece that made me believe he was more a musical genius than a *marketing* genius. I mean, was that music "composed" at all? Did anyone other than the drummers even demonstrate much technical skill? I get much more pleasure out of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. I agree that the closeups in negative recall those abstract animation shorts of the silent age.

PS I still say that 1966 is *the* year for short film. I've seen 105 shorts from '66, which is over 20 more than I've seen from any other year (if I don't count the Lumieres).

Carmel1379 · #6

Just dropping off some material (which I haven't read yet) about Sun Ra (in particular about his "myth-science" and more broadly afrofuturism): Kodwo Eshun's More Brilliant Than The Sun and an article opening with this Sun Ra quote:

...
I am not a fantasy in a real sense
I am a fantasy in a false sense
yet I exist
there are no shadows where I am
because I am the fire of the lightening
and the flame of the sun
my name is the sun
...

nm