The Ambush Party and e-cinema: visual music and the beat generation

Films from the Beat era, when writers and film-makers were inspired by the improvised patterns of bepop. Live accompaniment from The Ambush Party.

December 9 @ EYE 19:15 hr

An evening devoted to visual music by master animators such as Hy Hirsh and Jordan Belson and jazzy films of the Beat Generation. Many of the highlights from the history of abstract animation were made in the fifties, in a climate characterized by a unique mix of jazz, interest in ‘altered states’, eastern religions and modern technology. Many of the filmmakers in this programme developed ways to improvise abstract images as a visual equivalent of how jazz musicians play. A programme that starts from the smoking of joints in ‘Vipers’ via the cosmic visions of Whitney and Belson to the utopian city models of artist Constant in ‘Gyromorphosis’.
Compiled and presented by abstract filmmaker Joost Rekveld, with live music by Ambush Party.